


I Keep Going to the River to Pray

by colazitron



Category: One Direction (Band), Union J (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Styles had quite the impressive resumé. Fresh out of university he'd quickly made a name for himself as the fresh, new path landscaping architecture needed. He'd founded his own company and established it firmly as one of the best in the UK all before he'd turned twenty-nine.</p><p>He was not a ghost-buster.</p><p>Somehow, when Louis Tomlinson, software mogul, hired him to renovate the private island he'd inherited, that skill would have proved just as, if not more, useful than any of the ones he had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Keep Going to the River to Pray

Harry Styles had a very professional smile. It was friendly but remained distant. It was as much a courtesy as the way he stood up and offered his hand to shake.

 

Harry Styles also had on a very flattering light blue shirt and dark grey slacks, his brown hair pulled up into a bun of all things, and bright, clear eyes.

 

“Mr. Tomlinson,” Harry Styles greeted him. “I’m Harry Styles. I apologise for the slightly unconventional meeting space.”

 

Louis looked around the pretty, modern café, its white furniture, high windows and display of trendy cakes at the counter. He smiled.

 

“Not at all. It’s nice not to always be stuck in the same stock boardroom or office,” he said and sat down. “Plus, I’ve been having a hankering for some cheesecake all day, so this is rather convenient for me.”

 

Mr. Styles’ smile widened the barest fraction of an inch. Idly Louis thought that a smile probably suited his face quite well.

 

“The lemon poppy seed is very good,” Mr. Styles said.

 

“Well then,” Louis said, his own smile seemingly fixed to his face as well. “I’ll try that.”

 

Seeing as Mr. Styles already had a half-eaten panino and a cup of tea in front of him, Louis excused himself to walk up to the counter and place his order. The bored lad manning the register seemed a little irked he would have to be doing some work after all, so Louis tried on a slightly more charming smile as he paid and accepted his own tea and cake. He took a fortifying breath and steeled himself before he walked back over to the table where Mr. Styles now had a tablet out in front of him. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach that somehow, this whole thing was looking to become a lot more tough than Louis had originally hoped for. He very much hoped he’d be wrong.

 

“Look, Mr. Tomlinson, I’m going to be frank with you,” Mr. Styles said after Louis had sat down and taken a sip of his own tea. Louis raised an eyebrow at the slightly ominous sounding sentence and motioned for him to go on.

 

“I was surprised to receive your email the other week. I must assume you’ve contacted me because of my work with _Fantastically Green_?”

 

“A friend referred you,” Louis said and got ready to assure Mr. Styles that he had been quite impressed with what he had done so far or what he’d seen of it anyway, which was really only the park of the hotel Eleanor worked at. That was quite impressive though. Instead Mr. Styles’s shoulders dropped just slightly and his eyes flicked to the side before they came back to rest on Louis.

 

“I feel obligated to inform you that I’m no longer in business with the company. I’m... on my own.”

 

“Oh?” Louis asked.

 

“Yes. Taking on a project such as yours alone, without a stable team to help out, is... ambitious.”

 

“You’re not taking it.”

 

“No,” Mr. Styles said quickly, the first flicker of genuine emotion that Louis could detect. “I’d very much like to work your project, I just want to be honest up front that it will take a lot longer without the network I’d already set up at Green.”

 

“How much longer are we talking?” Louis asked.

 

“Well, I’m not certain what exactly it is you want to do yet so I can only give you a rough estimate based on similar projects I’ve done but... well into the summer. Maybe even fall.”

 

“Oh,” Louis said, relieved. “I thought you were going to say it’d take a year or more.”

 

“No,” Mr. Styles said, smile back in place and seeming a little more genuinely amused. “It’s not that big an island. And from your email I gather you don’t want the Versailles Gardens.”

 

“No, I don’t,” Louis confirmed and smiled back. The atmosphere between them felt a little less stilted now. Even with the plethora of corporate meetings Louis attended he wasn’t used to this standoffishness behind Mr. Styles’s polite manners.

 

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Louis said, picking up the fork, “why aren’t you with _Fantastically Green_ anymore?”

 

Evidently it was the wrong question to ask, as Mr. Styles seemed to pull whatever walls he’d let down before back up with his overly polite smile.

 

“My ex-fiancé bought out my share of the company.”

 

Ouch. Definitely the wrong question to ask.

 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...”

 

“It’s quite alright. It’s not a secret in my... circles,” Mr. Styles said.

 

“Well, in the spirit of honesty,” Louis said, running a hand through his hair that probably belied his nerves a little too much. “I feel I must tell you that this project has so far not been blessed with... anything, really.”

 

“How so?” Mr. Styles asked, brow furrowed.

 

“Well, I’ve hired two landscape architects last fall but neither of them even really started working. They, um...”

 

Louis broke off and took a sip of his tea. Mr. Styles seemed intrigued.

 

“Yes?”

 

“The island has always been rumoured to be haunted by the locals. They claim whenever they tried working on the ground, strange... things would happen. It seems the people I’d hired agreed.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Yes,” Louis sighed. “Apparently some people have even seen the ‘ghostly figure of an early 20th century boy’.”

 

Mr. Styles blinked at him, expression wiped clean of everything but surprise for a moment, before his eyes narrowed and his face grew tight again.

 

“If you’re here to make fun of me, Mr. Tomlinson-”

 

“I assure you that’s the very last thing I want to do. I’m not a superstitious man, but the same seems not to be true of the men I hired. I couldn’t persuade any of them to come back.”

 

"I don't believe in ghost stories," Mr. Styles said, still seeming wary. Louis shot him a smile and then shrugged a bit helplessly.

 

"As I'm not aware of any stolen pirate gold in my family's possession, we should be safe enough from those," he said, hoping to lighten the mood again. Mr. Styles acknowledged the reference with a slight twitch of his lips, but otherwise didn't give any indication of his thoughts. Louis thought it best to let him think it over a bit and turned back to his tea and cheese cake. It really was rather good.

 

Mr. Styles in turn sipped at his tea. The cup looked almost comically small in his long fingers and big palms. Louis took in the width of his shoulders under his shirt without really intending to and looked down at his pie before his thoughts could go anywhere else.

 

"I'll be blunt, Mr. Tomlinson," Mr. Styles said at last, "I really need this project and you and your company have an impeccable reputation, so I'm going to ignore your little Halloween tale and accept. But at the first sign that you're not just eccentric but broke or unstable, I'm out."

 

Louis would be lying if he said the comment didn't smart a bit, but he couldn't blame Mr. Styles for his caution. It was more or less what he'd suspected about the teams he'd previously hired. Assuming there was nothing to this ghost story was by far the more logical choice. So he smiled.

 

"I understand completely. How about we do this with partial contracts. One for the planning stage and one for the implementation. I'll pay you in two installments and you'll get a partial salary up until whenever you decide I'm not just eccentric," he suggested. Mr. Styles stayed silent for a heartbeat or two, no indication of his thoughts on his face and then nodded curtly.

 

"Very well. We'll have to talk about the details of the implementation after you've approved the plan anyway. My salary depends on how much crew you want to bring in; whether I'll mostly be supervising or doing much of the work myself," Mr. Styles said.

 

"Lovely," Louis said, feeling suddenly relieved. He'd promised his granddad he'd restore the manor and the whole island to its former glory and while Louis wasn't sure yet whether he'd keep it or sell it when he was done he did feel strangely honour-bound to see it restored anyway. He did have nice memories of it from the few times he'd visited it as a child. It had always seemed a bit like something out of a fairytale.

 

"I assume you would like to see the island for yourself? Otherwise I can just have the previous landscaper's measurements and such sent to you."

 

"No, you're right, I'd like to make my own. There's no guarantee I'll have what I need to form a workable plan. And I'd much rather have an impression of the island that's not just numbers on a sheet of paper before we get started," Mr. Styles said. Louis nodded.

 

"I'll be going up this weekend. How about you join me on Monday?"

 

"That should work just fine," Mr. Styles said, tapping at his tablet to seemingly enter the appointment. "I'll stay for two or three days to get a good look around and start measuring for a first draft plan, if that's alright with you?"

 

"I need to be back in London by Thursday, but you're welcome to stay until Wednesday night," Louis said, consulting his own diary. When he looked up Mr. Styles was nodding to himself and scribbling notes on his tablet.

 

"That should be alright. Once we've found an idea you approve of, I'll be able to tell you how long the detailed measuring should take, though it's usually in the neighbourhood of a week or two, and then another two maybe to draw up the complete plans, given that I'll be working alone."

 

"Sounds great," Louis said. He was really just hoping Mr. Styles would even make it through coming up with a plan.

 

"I'll email you a draft for the contract this week then and if my terms are acceptable, we can sign Monday," Mr. Styles said.

 

"Perfect. I look forward to what you'll come up with. I really am quite impressed with your previous work," Louis said. Mr. Styles’ smile tipped over into something warmer and he held his hand out for Louis to shake again.

 

"I look forward to working with you as well," he said.

 

"See you Monday then," Louis said, giving Mr. Styles’ hand a firm shake as he got up. Mr. Styles got up with him, picture perfect gentleman, and nodded at Louis in farewell.

 

When Louis passed by the large window and couldn’t resist a look inside, Mr. Styles was staring at his tablet and had picked the half-eaten panino back up. Louis couldn't help thinking back to Mr. Styles' scumbag of a fiancé/e and be glad that the contact information Eleanor had given him had been for him directly and not his former company. He'd have hated to inadvertently contribute to someone's financial gain who had no problem treating people they supposedly loved like that.

 

 

Mr. Styles sent him the contract draft on Wednesday and Louis immediately forwarded it to his lawyer, answering the email with directions on how to get to the island and where to best leave his car on the mainland. By Sunday evening the contract had been given the okay by Louis' lawyers and he'd found himself triple checking the guest room and the state of the fridge even though Mr. Styles wasn't set to arrive until Monday noon. He couldn't help the flutter of nerves in his belly at the thought of someone else staying on the island with him. The other landscapers had preferred to stay on the main island of the little archipelago in the evening but Harry Styles had gladly taken him up on the offer of staying at Devore Manor with Louis. It did, after all, have the room.

 

Monday morning dawned grey and windy and Louis sincerely hoped the weather would clear up. The island made a far nicer first impression in the sunlight. Even though Louis had never experienced any kind of apparitions or anything else that he'd deem supernatural, he couldn't deny that there was something a little bit creepy about the old run down house standing lonely on its little island.

 

There wasn't even really any good story to go with it. It had never housed quarantined patients, it wasn't an ancient religious site, it was just a private island that a rich judge had once upon a time been gifted and decided to make his residence. By all accounts he hadn't been a pleasant fellow either. Louis wasn't sure he remembered all the stories his great-grandmother had told him when he'd been a child correctly and his mother had never really been too interested in their family history, but great granny Edith hadn't been fond of her grandfather, of that much he was relatively certain.

 

Giant manors on private islands were probably more interesting to five year old boys than they were to the twenty five year old single mothers of said five year old boys, so he couldn't exactly blame his mum. He'd still believed he'd find some hidden treasure somewhere when they'd come to visit back then. She'd already known there wasn't anything behind the fifty two doors but dust and cobwebs.

 

Now Louis had seen plenty of that dust and cobwebs himself. The cleaning company from the main island of the archipelago refused to work in Devore Manor because of the rumours that it was haunted and even the crew from the mainland had rushed off after only two days with the flimsiest excuses, leaving Louis with a few hospitable rooms and a lot of frustration. At least those rooms included the kitchen and bathrooms.

 

But Louis couldn't spend all of his time here himself, he had a bloody job to do, for heaven's sake. Quite successfully at that as well. So the house still didn't look anywhere near ready to even be inspected by professionals. Originally Louis had planned to have it renovated before he'd bring someone in to work on the garden, but then the James deal last fall had demanded all of his attention, his cleaners kept quitting on him and the landscape artists he'd brought in to assess the state of the flora had started talking about noises and things moving by themselves.

 

Harry Styles seemed like he could maybe be the first good thing to happen to this project and if he started working here without reporting any ghostly sightings, maybe it'd be easier to convince others to work on the house. So when Louis saw Liam's little ferry boat approach the island, he checked the room he'd prepared for Mr. Styles a fourth time before walking down to the beach to welcome him to the island. Liam waved jovially while he steered the boat up to the mini marina and then tossed Louis the heavy rope. Louis wound it around a stubby pillar there for that specific purpose a couple times and waited for Liam to fix the other rope first before taking this one back from Louis and tying the boat up securely.

 

"Third time's the charm?" Liam asked him then, tilting his head towards where Harry was still standing on the boat, looking up at Devore Manor. Louis grinned at him, hoping to look more confident than he felt.

 

"Definitely," he said. "Come summer I might need you to lug heavy things around again."

 

Liam laughed and clapped Louis on the back. It really was a shame that he was exclusively into girls. Louis could still remember the subtle shift of his muscles underneath his windbreaker last fall when he'd helped out with getting some of the more cumbersome trash off the island.

 

"Well, he certainly is charming," Liam said, looking back over at Harry Styles before winking at Louis. Louis couldn't help feeling a bit confused. Charming? The same man he'd met in that café last week? He'd been nothing but polite and professional and while he was definitely good-looking and Louis certainly didn't dislike him, he'd not describe him as charming.

 

"Also a bit trapped on your boat," Louis said instead of pursuing that thread of conversation further. Mr. Styles was indeed stood at the door like thingy at the side of the boat, seemingly considering whether or not he should just throw his weekender bag onto the concrete and jump after it or ask for help. It wasn't a wide gap by any means and Louis himself wouldn't hesitate to make the jump but it always was more difficult to do with luggage and if Mr. Styles, as Louis assumed, had electronics in there, he wouldn't want to throw those around.

 

"Oh," Liam said, and bustled over to offer Mr. Styles a hand. Liam took his bag from him first, setting it down onto the concrete and then held out a hand to him again. Mr. Styles seemed startled by it at first but laughed openly and demurely placed his hand in Liam's before hopping down off the boat easily. The wind wasn't enough to cover up the happy sound and Louis felt his cheeks move in response to it before he turned his face into the wind and took a moment to compose himself.

 

Oh no, this was not happening.

 

"Mr. Tomlinson," he heard Mr. Styles say and turned back, brushing the hair out of his face, before shaking his hand with a smile.

 

"Mr. Styles, welcome," he said. "I hope Liam hasn't made you seasick?"

 

Mr. Styles laughed, while Liam made an outraged face behind his back and then rolled his eyes. Rude. Louis was not flirting.

 

"Oh, no, it's been smooth sailing. Or, um, motor... ing."

 

Louis' lips twitched and he wondered whether Mr. Styles had really almost been about to make that joke.

 

"Lovely," he said and then turned back to Liam, reaching into his coat pocket for his wallet, counting out a few notes and handing them over.

 

"Thank you kindly," Liam grinned at him and then affected a salute, pocketing the money. "Wednesday?"

 

"Yeah, please. Four?"

 

"No problem. Just call if anything changes,” Liam said and then turned to Mr. Styles, shaking his hand. “Bye, Harry. See you Wednesday.”

 

“Yeah. Thanks again, Liam,” Mr. Styles said with a friendly smile. Louis couldn’t do anything but watch the interaction with guarded interest and smooth his features over when Mr. Styles turned back to him. How did he get on first name basis with Liam in the course of a thirty minute boat ride?

 

“Well,” Louis said, only just managing not to clap his hands to get Mr. Styles’ attention. Not a group of school children, Louis. He’s a professional. “Shall I show you around?”

 

“Sure, yeah,” Mr. Styles said.

 

“I’ll show you to your room first so you can set down your bag,” Louis said. Mr. Styles smiled and inclined his head in thanks so Louis turned around to lead him up the little slope before he could do more than notice that Mr. Styles seemed both more comfortable and approachable in his dark blue jeans and grey pea coat here on Louis’ private island than he had last week in business attire in that café. No less nice to look at for it though. The relaxed chic really worked for him.

 

“There’s not really an interesting story about the island, I’m afraid,” Louis said, drowning out his own thoughts and chancing a glance over his shoulder at Mr. Styles who was looking around the landscape but turned to listen politely when Louis started talking.

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah. The neighbouring island has an ancient church and there’s another one that was used as a quarantine hospital but this one was just gifted to my great-great-... great-grandfather for ‘services to the Duchy’.”

 

“What kind of service?”

 

“I don’t know, exactly. It’s never been mentioned. I only know he was a judge and great-granny Edith didn’t like him.”

 

God, why on Earth had he just said that? Louis rolled his eyes at himself, but when he looked back, Mr. Styles was smiling, seemingly not minding Louis’ bout of over-sharing.

 

“My grandfather was the last person to live here and it was only during his early childhood and retirement. So everything’s a bit...” Louis breaks off and gestures around with a hand, glad that Mr. Styles couldn’t see how a flush was worming its way up his cheeks.

 

Mr. Styles cast his eyes around and smiled.

 

“There’s some really interesting flora in these parts,” he said instead of commenting. Louis wasn’t sure if that meant that he agreed and didn’t want to seem impolite or whether he assumed that Louis had been making a joke or simply didn’t think his comment needed any kind of reply from his side. Louis had to confess, at least in the privacy of his own mind, that something about the man had him stumbling over his words like a fool, feeling like a nervous teenager.

 

“Is there?” Louis asked.

 

“Yeah, there are some plants here that don’t really grow very well anywhere else in the UK or Ireland, because of the Gulf Stream,” Mr. Styles said. “They’re not all particularly decorative, but... well.”

 

Louis turned around to smile at him, noting that Mr. Styles’ smile seemed a bit lop-sided and guarded.

 

“I understand,” he said.

 

“It means you’ve definitely got a wide range of choices for what you want to put into the garden,” Mr. Styles said, steering the conversation back into more professional regions. Louis could only nod.

 

“I’d not given it much thought yet, to be honest,” he said. “I’d sort of hoped that you’d make those decisions, mostly? I don’t really know much about plants. Or anything, really. Got a bit of a black thumb, me.”

 

“An easily manageable and mostly self-reliant ensemble, then,” Mr. Styles said, one cheek dimpling just a little bit with how the corner of his mouth was quirked. Dimples, huh? Huh.

 

“Yes,” Louis laughed, not wanting in any way to discourage the lightening of the atmosphere between them. “I think that would be best.”

 

Mr. Styles turned around to survey the gentle downwards slope of the island they’d climbed. From here in front of the Manor one could see most of the island, except for the bit at the back of it, of course. There wasn’t much of it, though. Mostly the decline behind the Manor was steep and unpleasant. There wasn’t much of a beach on that side either.

 

“Leaving most of the island how it is would work well then, I think. Some subtle geo-shaping and few bushes or trees maybe. Gardens only around the house,” Mr. Styles said.

 

“Sounds great,” Louis said with a smile and then stepped aside, opening the door to the Manor. “If you’d follow me inside?”

 

Even though Louis hadn’t been spending too much time here, the curiosity with which Mr. Styles looked around the interior of the house made Louis feel like he’d invited him inside for a cup of tea after a particularly stressful date. He kept feeling like Mr. Styles was going to judge something as lacking, take his bags, call for Liam and leave again.

 

“I’d originally planned to have the house fixed up first, but the rumours of its being haunted have so far proven incredibly frustrating,” Louis said, walking up the creaky steps and not checking to see if Mr. Styles was still following. Why did he keep telling him about how this was a failing project? That wasn’t going to make him want to work on it, now was it?

 

“We can always wait with planting flowers close to the house until renovations are done,” Mr. Styles said diplomatically. Louis chose to stay silent until they’d reached the end of the corridor that housed the hospitable rooms. There was one more, in between the ones Mr. Styles and he would be inhabiting as he thought it’d be nicer not to share a wall, but other than that the whole floor was still very much in need of a good straightening up.

 

“Here we are,” Louis said, pushing open the door to reveal the room. The walls were panelled with dark wood but the windows were quite large so the room wasn’t too dreary. The drapes of the old four-poster bed had been removed leaving it looking a bit naked. Still, compared to the almost see-through, hole-ridden dusty mess that had been hanging off the frame on top of the bed before, it was definitely an improvement.

 

“Thank you,” Mr. Styles said and stepped inside the room, setting his bag down by the bed and doing a slow turn around his own axis to take in the room. His gaze got stuck a bit on the painting that hung on the wall opposite the bed, above the little fireplace. It was a replica of a famous work, though Louis had never been able to remember it. A little demon-looking thing sat on the chest of a woman. Probably it was something to do with religion. Weren’t they all something to do with religion?

 

“Well, that’s gonna make sure I have nice dreams,” Mr. Styles said. His intonation was a bit flat, but the tilt to his lips suggested he was joking. Still.

 

“Feel free to take it down,” Louis said, with a smile of his own. Mr. Styles only looked at him for a moment before he spoke again.

 

“I’d like to go for a walk around the island, if that’s alright? Assess the situation?”

 

"Yeah, sure," Louis said, stepping aside automatically like he was blocking the exit. He wasn't. Mr. Styles gave him a nod and then turned around to his bag.

 

"Um," Louis said, flexing his fingers a bit to stave off the urge to link his hands behind his back. Mr. Styles turned back to give him his attention again.

 

"My room's two doors down, at the end of the hallway, should you need anything. I have a study downstairs where I'll be working most of the time during the day. The kitchen and bathroom are also downstairs. Would you like to see them now or...?"

 

"Oh, yes," Mr. Styles said and smiled like he'd forgotten about a house needing things other than bedrooms for a moment. "That would be great. I'll be out of your hair right after then."

 

"It's absolutely no bother," Louis said. "I'm the one who asked you here after all. Thank you, by the way, for coming to have a look at it."

 

"It's a great opportunity," Mr. Styles said and quietly followed Louis down the stairs and through the entrance hall through the sitting rooms, dining room and finally into the kitchen.

 

"We should have enough food in the fridge and pantry to last us until Wednesday. I'm not much of a cook, so most of it is sandwich stuff or ready-made," Louis explained. "There's tea right over there by the kettle. Feel free to take whatever you want."

 

"Thank you," Mr. Styles said.

 

"You're welcome. Oh, I completely forgot to ask; do you have any allergies or dietary restrictions?"

 

"No, I'm not complicated at all," Mr. Styles said, a small smile on his lips this time. Louis nodded, relieved.

 

"Well, my study's to the left of the first drawing room. If you need anything you'll probably find me there. We do get cell reception here though, so you can always call."

 

"Alright. Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson."

 

Louis waved him off and tried another smile. He'd hoped having someone else on the island might also make it feel slightly less... abandoned, but with the way Mr. Styles was still treating him like a least favourite relative at a family wedding, well. That probably wasn't going to happen.

 

"Shall we reconvene for dinner? You can tell me about your impression of the island."

 

Mr. Styles appeared surprised.

 

"Oh. Sure, if you want. There won't be much to share yet, I'm afraid. I can't really start planning in earnest for quite a while yet."

 

"No, no, of course not," Louis said. "I'm just curious, really. And I thought the company might be nice. My mum always goes on and on about how eating alone is unhealthy."

 

Over sharing. He was over sharing again.

 

Mr. Styles smiled.

 

"She'd be right about that," Mr. Styles said and then shrugged. "Sure, let's have dinner. Shall we say around six?"

 

Louis' neck ran a bit warm at the phrasing, but he smiled and nodded his assent.

 

"Sounds good. At six in the kitchen. We'll see what we're in the mood for then."

 

"See you for dinner, Mr. Tomlinson," Mr. Styles said and then turned around and left Louis standing in the kitchen, staring blankly at the space he had just vacated. Charming? Really, Liam? Maybe he'd simply meant that Mr. Styles was good-looking. He did have quite a pleasant face and everything else, if Louis’ memory of the fitted shirt he’d worn for their first meeting was anything to go by. But charming? Not quite.

 

Louis heaved a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. Tea. He would make a fresh cup of tea and get back to work and deal with Mr. Styles at dinner.

 

 

Thankfully Louis' work was both fun and demanding enough that he spent no more time puzzling about Mr. Styles until roughly five fourty-five, at which point he lost an internal battle with himself and found himself in the kitchen at ten to six, just in case Mr. Styles was the type to be early to everything. He wasn't. At six sharp he strolled into the kitchen, cheeks flushed red as if he'd just come in from outside.

 

"Hi," Mr. Styles said. His smile was still mostly polite but either Louis was getting used to it or it seemed a bit warmer this evening.

 

"Hi. What are you in the mood for?" Louis asked.

 

"Sushi," Mr. Styles said, voice and face completely earnest. Louis blinked in surprise. That was a joke, right?

 

"Frozen pizza it is," he said, but made sure to smile. Mr. Styles returned it.

 

"Whatever you have planned is perfectly alright," Mr. Styles said. "I really am not complicated at all."

 

“Well, everyone likes pizza,” Louis said. “We’ll see tomorrow when we’re having cup noodles.”

 

“I did go to university,” Mr. Styles said, still smiling. “I remember many a night of cup noodles quite fondly.”

 

“Fondly? I don’t think you’re supposed to remember them fondly,” Louis said, taking the cellophane off the pizzas. By habit, he picked the cheese that inevitably fell off with his fingers and put it in his mouth, before remembering he should maybe try for slightly more elevated eating manners when in company of a potential business associate. But when he turned Mr. Styles was still wearing that same smile.

 

“By the way,” Louis said, pushing the pizzas into the oven and then turning around to look at Mr. Styles. “My lawyers gave the okay for the contracts, so if you still want to, we can sign. Or you can look around till Wednesday if you’d rather, to make up your mind.”

 

“Not necessary. I definitely want to sign.”

 

“Oh! Great,” Louis said, smile widening with relief. Surely this meant that things were looking up.

 

“I’ve got them in my office, if you want to...” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. Mr. Styles shrugged and nodded.

 

“Sure. No time like the present.”

 

“Wonderful. Right through here, please,” he said, leading Mr. Styles out the second door of the kitchen and down the corridor to his office, instead of through all the sitting rooms like how they’d gone earlier.

 

“I’ve already signed them,” Louis said, reaching for the slim paper folder on his desk that contained the two copies of the contracts. “So if you want to read through them and sign.”

 

“Thank you,” Mr. Styles said. They stayed suspended in the office for a moment before Louis swallowed and forced his mouth open, hoping the words would come to him.

 

“I’ll keep an eye on the pizza and leave you to it? You’re welcome to stay in here. Or come back to the kitchen. Or however you want.”

 

“I’ll stay, thank you,” Mr. Styles said and made for the armchair towards the side of the room. It was one of Louis’ favourite pieces of furniture that had come with the whole inheriting-a-Manor-and-a-private-island deal. It was worn and comfy with age yet still perfectly serviceable.

 

“Sure. I’ll come get you when the food’s done. Or you’ll know where to find me,” Louis said. Mr. Styles nodded cordially and for a moment Louis felt back in school, being dismissed by the headmistress after a particularly daring prank had landed him a heart to heart. Sighing to himself as he strolled back down the corridor he raked a hand through his hair. He’d had a better rapport with his headmistress. The woman had had a surprising sense of humour.

 

Mr. Styles ended up joining him in the kitchen just as Louis pulled the second pizza out of the oven. He couldn’t have more than skimmed the contracts.

 

“I’ll read through the rest after dinner and give it back tomorrow,” Mr. Styles said.

 

“Yes, of course. It’ll be a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Styles,” Louis said and held out a hand. Mr. Styles seemed a bit taken aback but then shook his hand nonetheless.

 

“The dining room’s not really... clean. Do you mind if we eat in here?” Louis asked, silently cursing himself for not thinking of that during his preparations earlier in the day. He’d checked on Mr. Styles’ room four times and not thought that apart from food to make they also needed a place to eat that food? Scatterbrained much?

 

“Oh, not at all,” Mr. Styles said and reached for the first slice of the pizza in front of him that Louis had already cut up. Louis concentrated on cutting his own and only looked up when Mr. Styles addressed him again.

 

“I was thinking,” he said, bitten off piece of pizza dangling from his hand, looking quite homey in his jeans and thick woollen jumper. Louis lifted his brows encouragingly. “I’m usually on first name basis with clients. Especially for projects like this where I’ll be hanging around quite a lot. If you don’t mind.”

 

Louis would be lying if he said that he wasn’t surprised.

 

“No, not at all,” he said, wiped his hand off on his jeans and held it out for Mr. Styles - for Harry - to shake again.

 

“Hi. I’m Louis.”

 

Harry grinned and shook his hand. Oh, yes. Louis had definitely been right that day in the café. A smile suited that face just wonderfully.

 

“Hi. Harry.”

 

“So, Harry. What have you got planned for my island?”

 

“A bit of botox. Definitely a hair cut. Extensions, probably. A bit of a spring colour. Some highlights,” Harry listed, like it was perfectly normal for a landscape architect to talk about a piece of land like he was a plastic surgeon or hairdresser or something.

 

Louis blinked, taken aback again. That was Harry joking, right? Like with the sushi earlier? Or maybe this was normal. What did Louis know about landscape architecture after all?

 

“Geo-shaping,” Harry said, saving Louis from awkwardly having to ask for clarification. “That’s when we alter the shape of the ground. Just softening the slope of the hills, mostly, so it’ll be easier for plants to grow. Also, I thought there’d be a great opportunity to get a distillator to desalinate the sea water and put in an artificial stream. It’d take care of a lot of the irrigation and in a pinch you’d have fresh water.”

 

“In case I get stranded on the island?”

 

“Yeah. It’s easier, long term, than relying on the house’s fresh water supply to water all the plants as well. It’s also greener. And, like I said, I could design it self-irrigating so you can leave for long stretches of time without needing to hire someone to come water everything every couple days.”

 

“That is a smart idea,” Louis said, pointing his slice of pizza at Harry. “And what about the rest of the beautification?”

 

“New grass, for starters, I’d suggest. Some shrubbery. A tree even, maybe. And flowers, of course. If you want them. I’ll really need some input on all this from you.”

 

“Grass sounds good. And shrubbery. Flowers too,” Louis said, shrugging. He really didn’t have much of a vision for this island beyond ‘hospitable and presentable’. “I’ve always liked roses.”

 

“English rose garden; perfect,” Harry said, with a smile, “Classic and far easier to maintain than people think, when done right.”

 

“Big fan of that,” Louis grinned back.

 

“Well, thanks to the Gulf Stream you can technically grow sub-tropical plants here, so if that’s something you want to go for...?”

 

“Nah,” Louis said. “I kinda want to keep it simple. I don’t want it to look too... designed. You know?”

 

“Sure. We’ll keep it local and classic then. Wildflowers with the grass would be an easy way to add a bit of colour and variety.”

 

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” Louis said. Great-granny Edith had always talked about picking flowers on the island but Louis had never really seen that many.

 

“Heather and groom are native to Cornwall. They’re evergreen and make for nice flashes of colour, if you don’t mind the slightly more rustic look.”

 

“I don’t. It adds a certain charm.”

 

Harry looked at Louis for a moment like he wasn’t quite sure whether he’d really meant that or was mocking him, but then gave him a lopsided smile.

 

“Agreed,” he said. “Thrift, or, uh, sea pink? It’s the county flower of the Isles apparently, and does really well in rock gardens. Elder is always nice.”

 

“I see you’ve got quite a few ideas,” Louis said, feeling a bit giddy with it. If Harry already had this many details planned out then surely he wasn’t going to abandon the project for a few creaky stairs. Harry smiled a bit self-consciously and shrugged.

 

“It’s a great chance, getting to redesign an entire island. Even if most of it won’t look very designed afterwards.”

 

“I’m just glad you’ve not met any ghosts yet,” Louis joked. Harry grinned.

 

“I’ve always been friendly with the dead.”

 

“Really? So in case of a zombie apocalypse I should keep you around?”

 

“Yep,” Harry said, dead serious but for the little smile dancing around his lips.

 

“I’ll keep that in mind. We should get that desalination thing as well. In case of apocalypse.”

 

“Good thinking,” Harry said and then reached for another slice of pizza. It was starting to go a bit cold, but Louis didn’t even really mind that the deliciously melty cheese was getting more and more chewy.

 

“The rose garden by the house?” Louis prompted and reached for his own slice of pizza. Harry swallowed and nodded.

 

“Yeah. That and a cottage garden maybe, I thought. A bit out front but mostly... there’s a terrace at the back, right? It’d be perfect for a semi-circle arrangement. It’d also protect the flowers from winds if they’re tucked up against the house.”

 

“Sounds perfect.”

 

Harry shrugged.

 

“It’s nothing much. The Versailles Gardens would be a more impressive accomplishment.”

 

“Well, you’ve not met the house ghost yet. Apparently he doesn’t like gardening.”

 

The look on Harry’s face went from softly amused to pensive when Louis brought up the ghost. Really, Louis should maybe stop sabotaging himself. That might have been a good idea if he wanted this project to succeed and sometime soon at that.

 

“Is that really why the others left? You’re not just making this up?” Harry asked carefully.

 

“I promise I’d come up with a far better story,” Louis said. “I’ve never once seen any kind of supernatural happenings here myself but it seems all the locals are convinced there are Things happening here.”

 

“Belief can be powerful,” Harry said. Louis shrugged and finished off his last slice of pizza.

 

“I suppose.”

 

“Don’t worry. I won’t be scared off easily,” Harry said, that same lop-sided smile from before poking a slightly deeper dimple into one cheek and making his eyes sparkle a bit in the old overhead light of the kitchen. Louis felt his cheeks run a bit hot and hurriedly smiled back before turning away under the pretence of getting a glass of water.

 

“Something to drink?” he asked over his shoulder, only turning back briefly to catch Harry’s nod.

 

“Please. Water would be great.”

 

The water always took a bit to go from freezing to refreshing and Louis plunged his hand underneath it, letting it distract him from Harry’s long legs and broad shoulders and soft hair and lovely face. That was not a good path of thought to go down. Business and pleasure didn’t mix. Louis had been there and learned his lesson.

 

When Harry frowned confusedly for a moment when their fingers brushed as Louis handed him his glass, Louis’ fingers markedly colder than Harry’s, Louis pretended not to notice.

 

“So how does this work? Do you work from London or...?”

 

“Oh, um, no. I’d like to work on site, if that’s possible?” Harry said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, hip cocked a little, one arm crossed before his chest, the other holding the glass up next to his face at a truly adventurous angle. Louis was briefly reminded of that email his sister Lottie had sent him the other day with the Egyptian figures. ‘I got into contraposto over there...’

 

“Of course. I’m not sure I can always be here, but... is there anything you need? Equipment? Crew?” Louis asked, before he could get to the ‘he looks amazing’ part of that particular joke. ... damn.

 

“Not yet, no. I might need a hand with measuring the island, but I’ve still got all the equipment I need,” Harry said and then added, with a self-deprecating little smile, “Haven’t done it all by myself since uni, but I still know how, no worries.”

 

“Liam might be willing to help out,” Louis said. “He often does odd jobs around the island.”

 

“Not scared of ghosts?”

 

“Hasn’t ever seen him either,” Louis said, grinning. Maybe Liam had been right after all. Maybe there was a charming lad underneath Harry’s professionalism. Maybe he just really wanted this project. Louis couldn’t really fault someone for being professional, could he?

 

“Well, if it’s alright with you, I’ll ask him when we see him Wednesday? I’ll have a better idea of what I need him for then as well.”

 

“Of course. As long as you run all hires by me first, you can have pretty much free reign. You’re the professional after all.”

 

“Thank you,” Harry said. “And would it be alright if I commandeered one of the drawing rooms as an office? I’ll need quite a bit of space.”

 

“Oh, of course,” Louis said. “They’re not cleaned out yet though... you could always have my office!”

 

“Oh, no, that’s not a problem. I don’t mind straightening one up. I quite like it, to be honest.”

 

Louis squinted his eyes at Harry at that. Surely not.

 

“You’re just saying that.”

 

“No, I promise I’m not,” Harry said, smile growing on his face. “I used to make my sister play House with me when we were kids. I’m quite homey, I suppose.”

 

“Well, at least let me help.”

 

“Don’t you have work to do?”

 

“Nothing much,” Louis said, watching Harry lick sauce or oil or cheese off his thumb after he’d finished off his own pizza.

 

“Then thank you. I appreciate the help,” Harry said. Louis smiled and then turned away to take care of the dishes. He had not expected Harry to step up next to him with a dish towel, but there he was. Their shoulders weren’t brushing, and Louis couldn’t feel the heat that Harry’s body probably gave off, but he could feel the shift in his personal bubble when Harry took the first plate from him. Considering that just hours ago Louis hadn’t been sure they’d get past a relationship solidly rooted in their client-contractor relationship it felt oddly normal to be doing the dishes with him like this.

 

They worked silently for the few minutes it took them. Harry handed over the dish towel so Louis could dry his hands off when they were done and took a step back into his own space.

 

“If you don’t mind I’ll go up to the room? I’ve had quite an early morning today.”

 

“No, no, of course. I usually have breakfast around eight, if you want to join me. Otherwise feel free to help yourself to anything you want,” Louis said. Harry nodded curtly and took another step back.

 

“Thank you. Good night then.”

 

“Yeah. Good night,” Louis said and watched Harry swipe the contracts off the counter, turn and stride out the door, turning down the corridor. Was there any other way to move than to stride with legs as long as that?

 

The silence in the kitchen rang loudly over the fading sound of Harry’s footsteps. Louis rubbed a hand over his face and then decided to prepare another cup of tea and go back to his office for a bit. He had a presentation to prepare. Puzzling over Harry’s hot-cold behaviour, or, well, lukewarm-cold behaviour, was not what he should be focussing on right now. Maybe he was just shy. Maybe he’d warm up to Louis.

 

Maybe that wasn’t even the point of hiring a landscape architect, lovely as his legs might be.

 

By the time Louis started yawning every ten minutes over the many spreadsheets detailing their new app’s specifics and he decided to call it quits for the night, his mind had calmed down significantly, even if it was only half nine. He powered down his tablet and grabbed his cup of tea, listening to the creaking of the stairs as he climbed them. He quite liked the way old houses didn’t let you move through them silently. It was probably because it reminded him of being a boy and trying to be stealthy to sneak up on whatever secrets this house hid, but there was something calming about the way the wood moved and creaked.

 

When he passed Harry’s door on the way to his own bedroom there wasn’t any light spilling out from underneath it, nor any sound. He must have really been tired, to already be asleep. Louis shook his head at himself. He wasn’t usually so easily won over. Harry was good-looking, yes, and he seemed like an alright lad, if a bit strange. But those two were not reasons for Louis to lose sleep over him, metaphorically or literally.

 

 

Harry didn’t join him for breakfast the next day. Instead when Louis woke up at around half seven and looked out the window to check the weather for the day, he saw him pacing up the slight slope of the island to the family mausoleum. Was he one of those terrible early risers? Up with the sun and all?

 

When Louis had made his way downstairs into the kitchen to fix himself some toast and tea, the doors to one of the sitting rooms were thrown wide open. That must have been the one that Harry chose to use as his office, then. Louis took a peek inside and found the sheets taken off all the furniture. The windows were thrown open, which was probably a good thing as the dusty old house smell really seeped into every crevice of the walls. Other than that though, nothing had been done yet. Louis supposed Harry didn’t know where to find cleaning utensils. Or maybe just didn’t want to wake Louis with loud scraping noises as he tried to push this old, heavy furniture around at the asscrack of dawn.

 

Louis was just contemplating a box of biscuits - he always made sure to have some sort of sweets with him, having a sweet tooth a size that’d make the tooth fairy weep with joy - when Harry joined him in the kitchen.

 

“Morning,” Harry said, making Louis look up, intending to offer Harry some tea or some biscuits or something. Harry’s hair was windswept and his cheeks rosy. His lips a deep, blood-rich pink and his peacoat still buttoned up. For a wild second Louis entertained the notion of offering himself, then reminded to answer like a normal human being who hadn’t been struck dumb with the sudden attractiveness of another person would.

 

“Morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well? The painting not giving you nightmares?”

 

Harry grinned the widest Louis had seen him do so far - the joke hadn’t been that funny, surely? - and then nodded, starting in on the buttons of his coat. He started in the middle and then moved up.

 

“Nope. No alps on my chest,” he said, which. Huh? Louis tried to make sense of that sentence for a moment or two but had to concede defeat.

 

“I’m sorry, no whats?” he asked.

 

“Alps?”

 

“Like the mountain range in central Europe?”

 

Harry grinned again and shook his head. He’d undone the three buttons up to his throat and moved down to undo the last two. He was wearing a dove grey jumper today that looked like a fluffy, cosy cloud.

 

“No, like the demon that sits on your chest and gives you nightmares. Like in the painting?”

 

That did make a lot more sense. Not about religion then, that painting. At least not directly.

 

“Though I think usually they go for women ‘cause they... like... breastmilk.”

 

Harry trailed off the exact same way he’d done yesterday on the mini marina when he’d possibly been about to make a joke about motorboating, only this time he saw the sentence through to the end. Louis grinned widely at him.

 

“Right. Well, either way, it’s good you didn’t get visited by a demon in the night.”

 

“I don’t know,” Harry said, seemingly spurred on by Louis’ positive reaction. “In some versions they’re incubi. That could be fun.”

 

The amount of times he’d felt himself run hot in Harry’s presence were wildly out of control, Louis decided when he felt his cheeks flush at Harry’s words. Incubi were the ones with cocks, right?

 

“As much as a little demon dicking sounds like a great time, don’t they also kill their victims?” Louis found himself saying and felt his eyes go a little wide while watching Harry’s do the same. Curse his brain-to-mouth filter for getting lazy when he felt comfortable with someone. Really, yesterday they’d been calling each other by their surnames, this was not the time for crude jokes about genitals!

 

But then Harry’s eyes relaxed and his lips curled in a truly filthy grin that Louis briefly noted would probably keep him company on a cold, boring day sometime.

 

“Ah, but what a way to go, don’t you think?” Harry said.

 

“Better than many others,” Louis granted and then busied himself opening the box of chocolate biscuits for something to do. This conversation was rapidly dissolving into a very strange mess.

 

“Biscuit?” he asked and offered Harry the box before Harry could say anything else, lest they ended up discussing how they’d prefer to die, if they were given the choice. Harry chuckled tonelessly and then reached out to grab two biscuits.

 

“Thanks,” he said, clearly dropping the subject for Louis’ sake. Never let it be said that Louis didn’t seize opportunities when they were presented to him.

 

“So anyway, I thought I could help you get the dust out of that room after breakfast?” he offered, going to pop some toast into the toasters. Biscuits were lovely and all, but not really full breakfast material.

 

“Yeah, thank you,” Harry said. “Is that a mausoleum, by the way? Up on that hill?”

 

“Yeah. Everyone in the family since they moved to this island are buried there, including my granddad.”

 

“I assume you want to keep it?”

 

“Well, no one’s been cremated and my granddad died not even a year ago, so. I don’t particularly want to dig it up or anything,” Louis said, face scrunched up involuntarily at the thought of what might be found in the graves. He wasn’t really solid on the whole decomposition thing, but eight months did not seem like enough time to go fully skeletal. He did not need to see the rotting corpse of his grandfather, really. No one else did either, he was sure.

 

The toast popped up. For a moment Louis wasn’t sure he really wanted to eat it, but then reached for one anyway.

 

“Yes, that’s. Alright,” Harry said, obviously trying to remain tactful but not in the least more interested in dealing with rotten or rotting bodies.

 

“I just asked because I need to incorporate it into the plan either way,” he said then. Louis nodded along.

 

“Will you be needing Liam before we leave tomorrow?” Louis asked. Harry shook his head.

 

“No, I’ve not got any equipment with me that would require assistance. I’ll do all that when I come back. This visit’s just to give me a rough idea so I can work out a framework sketch.”

 

“Alright,” Louis said, reaching for the second piece of toast. “Let’s get to it then.”

 

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Harry asked. Louis shrugged.

 

“I’ve got a bit of a queasy stomach of a morning. I’ll have brunch in an hour or two. Don’t worry, I’ve been taking care of myself for years now.”

 

“If you say so...” Harry said and left a flustered Louis to follow him into the sitting room.

 

 

They spent the rest of the morning dusting and vacuuming even washing the floor before Harry made them break for that brunch that Louis had mentioned. By lunchtime though they had managed to rearrange the furniture so that Harry could use the room how he wanted, even if Louis wasn’t entirely certain he understood the layout of the room entirely. Harry assured him it’d make sense once he brought a few things with him next time.

 

When Louis went to spend the afternoon after a lunch of the promised cup noodles in his office, while Harry wandered around the island, the folder with his copy of the contract, signed and all, was lying on his desk. Louis twisted around to look out the window as if he’d see Harry with his little gadget Louis didn’t even try to ask about just because he’d been thinking about him then.

 

He couldn’t resist occasionally turning around in his chair and glancing out the window to see whether he could see Harry from it throughout the rest of the afternoon either. Once Harry knocked on the glass and had his face pressed up against it, causing at least five of Louis’ hair to grey spontaneously. Louis could hear Harry’s loud laugh through the glass. He wasn’t going to admit to it, but he really, really liked hearing it. Because it meant that Harry had gotten significantly more used to his company, of course. Not because it sounded like a delighted five year old and a dirty club hook up at the same time. Two things that should not go together and yet, somehow, Harry made it work.

 

Over dinner Harry shared some of his more detailed thoughts for the island and though he lost Louis about five minutes into the conversation, Louis just kept on making vaguely encouraging sounds, because Harry sounded like he was having fun and Louis wasn’t about to curb that enthusiasm. At some point Harry must have noticed that Louis wasn’t really able to follow the more intricate details of landscape architecture, because he trailed off into a smile.

 

“Sorry about that.”

 

“No, no, it’s interesting. I just don’t know what half the words you use mean,” Louis said.

 

“My fiancé used to hate when I did that,” Harry said and then froze a little, like he hadn’t meant to say it. Louis’ hands were cold when he reached for his glass to take a sip of water.

 

“You’d think he’d know what you were talking about if he was in your company?”

 

“Nah. He did the numbers, management side of things,” Harry said. His shrug seemed a little forced.

 

“Ah,” Louis said in acknowledgement but decided a change in topic would probably be best. “When can you come back here?”

 

“I don’t have any other projects currently, so really whenever you can come back. I assume you’re far more busy than I am.”

 

“If I remember correctly,” Louis said, trying to recall all his appointments in the near future, “I can be back next weekend. Not this one, but the one after.”

 

“That works for me.”

 

“I can make it Friday, maybe. I’ll let you know by next week.”

 

“Alright, yeah. That’s fine.”

 

“How much time will you need for all the measuring you need to do?”

 

“Well, ideally, at least a week,” Harry said. “Longer, if possible.”

 

“Hm. I don’t think I can stay that long,” Louis said, flipping through his mental calendar again. He couldn’t stay anywhere without internet for a week without officially going on holiday, never mind longer than that. While there was a phone line to the island as far as Louis knew he wasn’t sure whether or not it was intact and if it was suitable for internet service.

 

“Would you be alright on your own?” Louis asked. He didn’t really like the thought of just leaving Harry to his own devices here on the island, but supposed he worked most projects without direct supervision or interference from the supervisor.

 

“Uh, sure,” Harry said, intonation going up towards the end of the sentence, turning it into more of a question than a statement. “Are you sure you’re alright with me being here on my own?”

 

“Of course. There’s nothing valuable to take, if that’s what you mean and even if there were, well, we’re sort of in the middle of the ocean.”

 

“I could split the profit fifty-fifty with Liam,” Harry said, smile pulling at his lips. Louis scoffed.

 

“Unlikely. Liam’s a boy scout in everything but name.”

 

“Damn. There goes my plan.”

 

“Foiled again.”

 

“It’s a hard life,” Harry said. His almost morbid, deadpan tone lent itself to jokes in a way Louis had not initially expected at all. Everything funny Harry said felt almost like it surprised the laughter out of Louis.

 

“Alright then. I’ll have your own set of keys made until next time. You can come and go as you want, or just stay. Liam will deliver groceries or take you shopping if you need it as well. And if you need to hire people or machinery or something that’s fine as long as you run it by me.”

 

“That sounds alright,” Harry said. He yawned into his hand and then rolled his shoulders back, stretching his back before smiling at Louis sheepishly.

 

“Bad back,” he said.

 

“My left knee twinges when it rains.”

 

“Really?”

 

“No. But it sounds like an appropriately old man injury to have,” Louis said with a grin.

 

“Haha,” Harry said, completely void of any amusement. He couldn’t hold the face for long though, a small smile on his lips.

 

“Well, since I’m such an old man, I’ll be off to bed now.”

 

“Oh. Sure. See you tomorrow then. Goodnight.”

 

“Goodnight, Louis,” Harry said. At least his exit felt less like a flight this evening. Louis tried to get back to work for a bit, but found he couldn’t really concentrate anymore, so he took the tablet up to bed with him, more to keep up the pretence that he would still be working than to actually keep working, and called it a day himself.

 

Wednesday morning Harry joined him for a quick breakfast in the kitchen, and Louis almost wished he hadn’t. There was a just-rolled-out-of-bed softness to his face that Louis really didn’t need to associate with the sunlight streaming into the room, making the dust dance like something far prettier and lighting Harry’s eyes up to a clear blue-green. Observing that Harry was a good-looking person was one thing, this thing where Louis was enchanted by dust motes was something else entirely.

 

“Tea?” Louis offered, blinking out of his thoughts. Harry’s smile wasn’t helping.

 

 

Harry spent the day traipsing around the island again, doing whatever it was he was doing, while Louis surrounded himself with spreadsheets about app specs and profit projections. After lunch they decided to spend the rest of the time until Liam came to pick them up playing card games with the deck Louis had found in the desk in his office a while ago. Harry turned out to be a lot more competitive than Louis would have guessed and a very sore loser as well, though he was obviously making an effort to appear gracious about it. Not that Harry lost a lot. He was surprisingly good even at games that Louis wouldn’t have thought were built on skill very much.

 

Liam greeted them both with the same cordial pat on the back when he came to pick them up, which might have offended Louis - Liam and he had known each other since childhood, after all, whereas this was only the second time Liam and Harry had even met - if he didn’t know that Liam was an all around friendly person.

 

“So how’s he doing?” Liam asked, Louis and he stood in the little cabin that contained all the navigation equipment while Harry stood outside and let the wind throw his hair around. It would be tangled something fierce when they got off the boat, but he didn’t seem to mind.

 

“So far, so good,” Louis said, “No immediate ghostly apparitions so he’s not planning on running away any time soon. We’ve signed the contract.”

 

“Well, that’s a good start,” Liam said diplomatically. Louis grinned and punched him in the shoulder lightly.

 

“Yeah. He might need a bit of help the next time we come back, in about ten days. Job’s yours if you want it. You can stay at the manor too, if it’s easier.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Like I said, I’ll take all the extra cash.”

 

“Harry might need a taxi for grocery runs and such as well.”

 

“Aw, and you’re making sure to provide everything for him? That’s so cute,” Liam teased, reaching over to pinch Louis’ cheek. Louis batted his hand away and rolled his eyes.

 

“I really want this to be the last time I have to start over,” he said instead of directly answering Liam’s comment.

 

“Yeah, of course. Anything I can do to help,” Liam said, changing tack immediately.

 

“Thanks, Liam. Here’s hoping it’ll work out this time,” Louis said.

 

“He seems like an alright lad,” Liam said nodding his head at Harry outside, “and he’s quite a bit younger than the others you’ve had round.”

 

“So that means he’s less likely to see the ghost that apparently haunts the island?” Louis asked. Liam laughed.

 

“I don’t know, bro. Maybe.”

 

“Yeah,” Louis said on a sigh, “maybe.”

 

 

 

Louis spent the ten days in London shuffling around appointments so he’d really be able to make it back out to the island on the Friday instead of Saturday and occasionally calling his best friend to whine about how the pretty landscape architect kept sending him pictures of flowers and shrubbery and asking for an opinion.

 

Zayn and he had met in uni and it was Zayn who had persuaded Louis to take his knack for technology more seriously and consider taking over the family business. At the time Devore-Tomlinson (then only ‘Devore Inc’) had been in a bit of a rut and in a twist that Louis would like to attribute to the universe’s sense of humour what got it out of that rut was an archiving algorithm Louis had initially written to sort Zayn’s and his combined comic book collection when they’d moved in together in their third year at uni. It had also put Louis’ name on the header.

 

Now Devore-Tomlinson was once again playing the game with the big boys. They’d branched out into mobile apps and browser games in addition to their trademark archiving solutions and Louis had taken over the creative direction. He left the CEO-ing to the business types, mostly, but equally left the actual code writing to the code writing monkeys. Sometimes he thought what his job really came down to, a lot of the time, was liaising between corporate interest and their creative teams. Making everyone involved feel like they were getting exactly what they wanted had always been a strength of his and even though this wasn’t exactly where he’d ever thought he’d end up, he did like it. Not least because it allowed him to add a significant amount of funds to Zayn’s indie comic book label.

 

“Have you googled him yet?” Zayn asked one evening when Louis was recounting the morning in the kitchen and the arresting sea-green of Harry’s eyes for probably the fourth time. Louis hadn’t, but once Zayn had hung up the phone, he pulled up the search engine and, with a little guilt gnawing at his stomach, typed in Harry’s name.

 

There had been an article published about him, his fiancé and _Fantastically Green_ only last year. It gave a brief overview of how Harry left his Cheshire childhood home to study landscape architecture in Edinburgh, met his now ex-fiancé through a mutual friend, quickly made a name for himself after graduating from university and finally started _Fantastically Green_ in London with said ex-fiancé and, apparently, funding from ex-fiancé's parents. The next four years they had taken _Fantastically Green_ from a start-up to one of the most well-established landscaping architecture firms in the UK and soon they were to be married.

 

Well. That particular one didn’t turn out quite like that, as Louis knew.

 

Some more googling revealed that the break-up and fallout had happened only about a month after this particular article had been published. From what Louis could glean the ex-fiancé had deliberately put a loophole in their partnering contract that allowed him to more or less oust Harry from his own company without having to pay him much in the way of a severance package. Closing the tab Louis couldn’t help but feel like he’d intruded on Harry’s privacy, even if the whole story was out there on the internet for everyone to read.

 

Louis pulled out his phone and shot Zayn a text.

 

why did u suggest googling??

 

wasn’t meant t b a suggestion. fucked up tho what his fiancé did.

 

how do u know??

 

a friend told me

 

Out of all of Louis’ friends Zayn definitely had the most eccentric circle of friends. Privilege of being an artist, probably. Louis wasn’t going to ask how that particular connection had come about.

 

In an effort to not let this preoccupation with Harry develop into something as awkward as a crush, he made it a point not to think about Harry if he could help it for the rest of the week and didn’t seek to draw out their email exchanges beyond the necessary. It worked until he was stood at the marina on Friday afternoon, chatting to Liam and waiting for Harry to arrive so they could leave for the island.

 

“Oh, there he is,” Liam said, turning Louis’ attention to Harry’s approaching figure. Louis looked up, caught sight of Harry, and, even though he was dressed in the same pea coat as the last time and an indiscriminate pair of black skinny jeans, Louis realised he was screwed. There was no way the way his lips itched to smile and his cheeks warmed were just aesthetic appreciation of a great pair of legs and a good set of shoulders.

 

In a moment of desperation he pulled out his phone to text Zayn again.

 

he’s so tall!! and handsome AS HELL!!!

 

lol. he’s so bad but he does it so well? Zayn replied.

 

fuck off

 

 

 

 

To be quite honest, while Harry didn’t really believe in ghost stories, turning back towards Devore Manor while Liam and Louis were leaving on Sunday afternoon he couldn’t quite deny that his stomach was squirming a bit. Liam was going to come back tomorrow morning to help Harry with his measurements and as he was literally alone on an island he was possibly in the safest situation he could find himself in, but. The house was gigantic. And in the creeping dusk it was easy to hear and see things that weren’t really there.

 

Shivering, Harry pulled his coat more tightly around himself and decided to just make himself some dinner, go to his room, read and sleep. Tomorrow the sun would come back up and he’d go back to being a rational adult. Right. Yes. That was a good plan.

 

The walk back up to the house seemed longer in the dark, the whole structure of the manor far more menacing, the way it loomed halfway up the incline of the island, which seemed to drop off into the ocean right behind it from the path up to the front door. It didn’t, of course. There was plenty of room behind the building, Harry knew that. It was part of his job to know the lay of the land. But still, walking up towards Devore Manor with the ocean waves rushing against the shore and a soft breeze Harry definitely understood why this location inspired people to believe in ghosts.

 

“Don’t be an idiot, H,” Harry muttered to himself as he locked up the front door. Louis had told him that left unlocked the old door tended to spring open and while there was a very, very slim chance of anyone rowing to the island to rob the place in the middle of the night, sometimes teenagers thought it was funny to dare each other to traipse around the old haunted Devore Manor and as such it was best to lock up. Not to mention that a stiff breeze could knock the door around which usually meant waking up from strange knocking sounds in the middle of the night. Harry was just going to spare himself those, if possible.

 

In the evening he decided to take his dinner up to his room with him, as there was no point in standing around the kitchen if he was just going to eat alone. Maybe tomorrow before Liam got here he’d get started on the dining room. Or another one of the sitting rooms that they could use as a dining room. The dining room itself was quite impressive. Definitely one made for Actual Dinners.

 

Probably he shouldn’t have brought a murder mystery set in an old Victorian mansion to read, just because the setting might enhance the reading experience though. Harry had always had an overactive imagination, he really didn’t need to challenge it this way. Nevertheless he continued following Jane Spector - super journalist cum detective - through two more chapters of traipsing around a Mansion she’d been asked to investigate by a mysterious gentleman who called himself ‘an admirer’ in the letters he sent, before his eyes started feeling heavy.

 

He absolutely did not leave a light on overnight.

 

(But he did think about it for a good five minutes.)

 

 

As was probably to be expected, the night passed without any kind of incident at all, unless Harry waking up from a dream briefly at around three in the morning counted. He had immediately fallen back asleep. Upon waking in the morning he had to search for his phone briefly and finally found it inside the little fireplace in the corner of the room even though he’d been relatively certain that he had put it on the mattress beside himself and even checked the time on it when he’d woken up during the night. He was, however, also the kind of person who had genuinely found a lost set of keys in the freezer amidst peas and toast before, so it was probably best not to worry about what kind of thought process would have made him put his phone in a fire place. Probably he should just be glad he hadn’t accidentally set it on fire. Not that Harry knew how to start a fire in a fireplace. There wasn’t any wood around the house for that purpose either, Harry thought. At least none that he’d seen.

 

Ignoring the phone thing, Harry decided to follow through on last night’s idea and look for an alternate dining room. There were so many rooms downstairs, surely one of them had a table.

 

By the time Liam came around in the late morning, Harry had all but forgotten about the phone-in-the-fireplace incident and cleaned the sitting room adjacent to the one he’d claimed as his office enough to use as a dining room.

 

“Wow, you’ve been busy,” Liam said, eyebrows rising up towards his hairline when Harry led him through the house to collect his instruments from his office.

 

“Well, I do need a space to work in, Liam,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

 

“I know, just. It took two cleaning crews to clean up the three bedrooms upstairs and the utilities and Louis’ office down here and you’ve done a whole room by yourself this morning?”

 

“Not quite as thoroughly, I’m sure. There are also probably things you’re not supposed to do to old hardwood floors that I’ve no idea about, so I just vacuumed and left it at that.”

 

“Yeah, still. Tommo doesn’t pay you for that as well, does he?” Liam asked. Harry frowned at him.

 

“No? It’s for my own comfort though, so why wouldn’t I?”

 

“I suppose,” Liam said with a shrug and followed Harry back outside. “So, what do we do?”

 

Liam turned out to be a more than capable assistant. He’d never done this kind of work before and while the minutia of it escaped his understanding, he was very good at standing where Harry needed him to, hold up instruments and read numbers for Harry to write down. Really, it wasn’t a difficult job and it probably bored Liam a lot, but Harry had always liked this part of the work; finding out what exactly the land he was going to work on was made of and how he could best use everything already here to his advantage. The fact that _Fantastically Green_ had worked as ecologically responsible and sustainable as possible had never come from some sort of marketing scheme, as had been implied by many a reporter and competitor, but from Harry’s understanding of what landscape architecture should be. The more you worked with what you already had at a site and the less you upset the local ecosystem, the more your landscape could flourish and the longer it would last. Really, why wouldn’t he have been doing exactly that?

 

Probably Christopher and whoever he’d hired to replace Harry would fail drastically at that. Christopher had never quite understood Harry’s approach, only that it brought in a great amount of pounds. Probably he’d hired some poncy showoff who still thought that orchids were the decorative flowers of choice.

 

“You okay?” Liam asked, startling Harry out of his thoughts.

 

“What? Yeah.”

 

“Just you’ve been glaring at that screen for two minutes now. Not what you’d hoped for?”

 

“Oh, no,” Harry said, finally jotting down the number and standing up from his crouch on the ground, “It’s perfect, actually.”

 

Liam’s face scrunched up in confusion but he seemed to decide not to press Harry on it.

 

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Harry asked, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from a possibility of him divulging his past. The sun was about to sink within the next thirty minutes, so they’d have to resume their work the next day.

 

“Oh. Um,” Liam said, shifting his weight from one leg of the other and smiling a bit sheepishly, “I’m quite flattered, but, er, I have a girlfriend.”

 

Harry blinked at him for a moment before an involuntary laugh escaped him. Liam looked a bit taken aback.

 

“Sorry, Liam, I didn’t mean to- I was just. I wasn’t asking you on a date! I was just offering you dinner. It’s getting late. I thought you might be hungry.”

 

“Oh,” Liam said.

 

“Yeah,” Harry said, grin still wide on his face even as he tried to suppress it. “Sorry, Liam, really. You’re not my type though.”

 

“Fair enough,” Liam said. “Is Louis your type?”

 

“What?” Harry asked, taken aback. Surely in the hour the three of them had spent in the same place at the same time Liam couldn’t have noticed that Harry, er, noticed Louis’ many rather splendid bodily features? “Why do you ask?”

 

Liam shrugged.

 

“Louis’ sort of everyone’s type, I’ve found.”

 

“Oh. Well, yeah, he’s... quite handsome, I suppose,” Harry said. “I don’t really know him very well, do I?”

 

‘Quite handsome’ really didn’t adequately describe the shocking sky blue Louis’ eyes had been the first time he’d sat down opposite Harry in the café, but he wasn’t about to tell Liam that, now was he.

 

“Astoundingly good review from Harry Styles there. ‘Quite handsome, I suppose’,” Liam said with a laugh.

 

“What are you trying to do, set me up?” Harry asked, amused himself.

 

“Maybe I’m trying to set Louis up,” Liam said.

 

“Oh,” Harry said, zipping the bag of instruments and turning towards the house. “I don’t think I’m the best choice, in that case.”

 

Liam raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t otherwise ask him to elaborate. Harry raked a hand through his hair, tousling it in a nervous habit he’d never been able to kick. So much for steering clear of his catastrophe of a private life.

 

“My, um, fiancé, basically just... left me at the altar, almost. Well, about two months before our wedding date. And he stole my company from me as the cherry on top of that. So I don’t think I’m really in the right place to be set up with anyone.”

 

“Mate,” Liam said, eyes wide. “What a massive cock!”

 

“It really wasn’t,” Harry said, prompting a scandalised laugh from Liam. Ah, yes, penis jokes. They did always so surprise people. Only one of the many reasons they were among Harry’s favourites.

 

"Was that, er, recently?" Liam asked.

 

"Last spring," Harry said. By now the idea that he'd ever loved Christopher as much as he had smarted a lot more than the broken engagement. Losing _Fantastically Green_ though, oh, that was definitely not something Harry was ready to forgive  or forget any time soon. Sure, Christopher parents' money had helped but they'd paid them back within two years and Harry didn't owe them anything anymore. Christopher may have talked him into opening the firm, but it was Harry's baby. Christopher’s business degree alone wouldn't have gotten him anywhere near the standing Green had within the industry.

 

"Is there any way you can get the company back or something?"

 

"No, I had a lawyer look over the contract but apparently there's a loophole in there that I didn't catch or something, so what he did is perfectly legal."

 

"Shit, that sucks," Liam said, putting a commiserating palm on Harry's shoulder. Harry couldn't help but smile at the gesture. The wounded look on Liam's face would make you think his dog had been run over, not that a person he hardly known had signed a contract they shouldn't have.

 

"If that offer still stands, by the way, I'd love to stay for dinner," Liam said.

 

"Sure, yeah. I'd like the company," Harry said. “That house is a little ridiculously large for one person.”

 

“Yeah, I don’t know how Tommo’s granddad did it. He had a nurse live with him for a bit shortly before he got moved to a nursing home, but I’m pretty sure he lived here alone for a good few years. I’d go nuts all on my own here.”

 

“Definitely,” Harry said.

 

“So what are you making?” Liam asked, accompanied by a little growl from his stomach. Harry tried to temper his smile. He was feeling quite hungry himself.

 

“Bangers and mash, I thought, if that’s alright with you?”

 

“Yeah, absolutely,” Liam said and then his face did a complicated thing like he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to be amused or worried. “You’re not going to be making dick jokes, are you?”

 

Harry couldn’t help the startled laugh.

 

“I wasn’t planning on it, but now I’ve got to make at least one.”

 

Liam groaned and mumbled something about how everyone he befriended turned out to be a complete child, but later on in the new dining room, he blushed and laughed at Harry’s antics. Clearly Liam didn’t mind a bit of immaturity.

 

 

The next morning all of Harry’s things were where he remembered leaving them, so he decided to forget about the phone-in-the-fireplace incident for good. Liam came over and stayed for dinner again and at night when Harry went to bed he felt almost a bit at home in the large house. He did always settle into new routines very quickly and since he had company during the day he didn’t mind the isolated location quite as much.

 

Four days into their measuring work Liam brought along a young Irish lad called Niall who incidentally worked at the pub on the mainland Louis had told Harry he could leave his car with. Niall was boisterous and constantly happy in a way that was completely different from Liam’s puppy persona. Between the two of them Harry was having a far greater time of it than he had expected to. And best of all, so far no ghostly appearances or otherwise strange activity had occurred.

 

Unless Harry developing a habit of sleepwalking counted.

 

A few days after his phone had ended up in the fireplace, he found his book there. A few days later, his shoes and a few days after that, his pillow. Harry had never sleepwalked before, but what other explanation was there, really?

 

Well.

 

What other rational explanation was there.

 

 

 

By the time Louis burst through the doors of the Manor on Saturday two weeks after he’d left Harry had found three more of his possessions in the exact same place in the fire place upon waking. Louis’ shout of ‘honey, I’m home!’ had Harry grinning and then biting down on his lip where he was mashing potatoes while two steaks sizzled in a pan, forgetting about his sleepwalking worries at once.

 

“Well, this is domestic,” Louis said, eyebrows hiking up his forehead as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen, stance wide like it always was, almost as if he was constantly trying to make himself appear to be bigger than he was. Harry was almost disgustingly endeared by it. While Louis wasn’t that much shorter than he was, the proportions of his body made him seem small and compact, while Harry had always tended more towards tall and gangly. It made him want to tuck Louis close against his body and feel how he’d be able to cover him from head to toe.

 

“So what are you making?” Louis asked, ambling closer and peering at the stove.

 

“Steak and mashed potatoes. And a sauce, probably.”

 

Louis grinned and shook his head, eyeing the pile of potato peels Harry hadn’t cleared away yet.

 

“Who even makes mashed potatoes from scratch these days?”

 

“I do,” Harry said with a shrug. Louis merely smiled at him for a moment, before turning away and busying himself with the kettle.

 

“So, anyway, how’s the project going?”

 

“Brilliant. I’m making good progress,” Harry said. “Liam’s been a massive help.”

 

“Yeah? That’s good,” Louis said.

 

“Yeah. Niall’s been around too, I assumed you wouldn’t mind?”

 

“Nialler? No, ‘course not. Bloody mental on a night out, that one.”

 

“Well, I’ve only known him sober but he was good company then as well,” Harry said, adding another dash of nutmeg to the mashed potatoes. Ever since someone had told him you could die of nutmeg poisoning he’d gotten far too careful with it.

 

“Good, good. No troubles then?”

 

“No. The most troublesome thing is my recent take to sleepwalking.”

 

“Sleepwalking?” Louis asked.

 

“Yeah. I keep finding some of my things in the fireplace when I wake up.”

 

“Huh,” Louis said and then added, “would you like a cup of tea, by the way?”

 

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Harry said, looking up from his mashed potatoes briefly to smile over at Louis.

 

“I used to sleepwalk loads as a teenager,” Louis said then.

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. Used to wander down into the living room and wake up on the sofa. Or next to the sofa. Quite strange.”

 

“Did you never fall?”

 

“Nah, I wasn’t one of the ones prone to confusing windows with doors and the likes. Lucky as well, my mum already had her work cut out for her with the five of us without me trying to jump out of windows.”

 

“That can happen?” Harry asked, slightly taken aback. Should he bar up the windows in the room? The first floor was quite high up.

 

Louis shrugged like he didn’t find that particular piece of information very worrying at all.

 

“I think so. It’s never happened to me and you seem preoccupied with your fireplace, so you should be fine.”

 

“Should be,” Harry repeated, but instead of pursuing the conversation further, he decided to plate their food. He quickly mixed some ale, ketchup and spices into the juice the steaks had left in the pan, before drizzling that over both their steaks. Louis watched him with mild curiosity.

 

“I’m not gonna ask what you did there and just trust you know what you’re doing.”

 

“Good choice,” Harry said with a grin. “By the way, I’ve turned one of the sitting rooms into a smaller dining room, so...”

 

“Oh, brilliant! You don’t need to keep doing that, but thanks anyway.”

 

“It wasn’t entirely selfless,” Harry assured him, and then picked up the two plates and their cutlery, leading Louis into the improvised dining room.

 

“Well, then I suppose I can live with it,” Louis said, smile audible in his voice. “And thank you for dinner, as well. You really didn’t have to-”

 

“Again,” Harry said, “Not entirely selfless.”

 

 

That night, when Harry woke up in the middle of the night, there was a boy sitting cross-legged at the foot end of the bed. In his hazy state, the most logical thing seemed to tuck in his legs a bit more and mumble a ‘sorry’, because the boy seemed to be teetering uncomfortably on the edge. Then Harry realised that the boy was slightly faded, as if he were a photograph that had been left in the sun for too long. Or a portrait that hung in a spot the sun hit every day, judging by the flat wool cap perched jauntily on his shaggy hair. With his high-waisted trousers, super loose shirt with rolled up sleeves and suspenders, he looked like a working class extra in every turn of the century film Harry had ever seen.

 

“Um,” Harry said, voice scratchy from sleep. The boy sighed and rolled his eyes and then ... then he was floating. He was still sitting cross-legged, but a good few inches above Harry’s duvet.

 

“Sleepwalking, honestly,” the boy said. He had a pleasant voice, but it was disconcertingly impossible to tell where it was coming from. Harry swallowed and backed up against the headboard, sitting up against the hard wood. The hair at the back of his neck stood on end.

 

“Um,” Harry repeated. What did one do when confronted with a possible ghost at some ungodly hour during the night? Screaming seemed ridiculous to Harry and was probably not going to accomplish anything either.

 

“You’re not very bright, are you?” the boy said. He seemed a few years younger than Harry. Well. A few years and about a century.

 

“Are you the one who kept moving my things?” Harry asked back. A grin spread over the boy’s face.

 

“Maybe not so dim after all,” he said.

 

“So you did?”

 

“Yes, of course I did. Whoever else would have? There hasn’t been anyone at the Manor except for yourself and me.”

 

For a moment Harry was both relieved that he was currently dealing with the only ghost haunting Devore Manor and that he was indeed not sleepwalking and thus safe from stumbling out of any windows. Then the reality, if it was reality, that he was talking to a ghost swept that relief away.

 

“What do you want with me?”

 

“With you? Absolutely nothing,” ghost boy said. “But I’ve seen your strange drawings and while I don’t really understand them, I think you’re going to do something to the island or the manor.”

 

“Yes, we’re-” Harry said, but was cut off by the boy.

 

“You mustn’t.”

 

“Mustn’t?” Harry repeated.

 

“Yes. If you change anything Josh might not recognise it. He’s not come back for me yet, you see.”

 

Harry did absolutely not see. Before he had the chance to ask for any kind of clarification, ghost boy vanished, leaving Harry alone in the bed, wondering whether he’d just had a very vivid hallucination. Maybe there was something wrong with the pipes in the house. Maybe he was slowly poisoning himself and these were the first symptoms. Sliding back down into the sheets, he couldn’t avoid curling his legs away from where ghost boy had been sitting. If he had been sitting at all, that was. Despite the way his heart was racing and his eyes seemed propped open by match sticks, Harry fell asleep rather quickly.

 

Over the course of the next day, the morning of which was spent explaining his findings and plans to Louis and the afternoon making phone calls, Harry managed to convince himself he must have been dreaming. There was simply no way, no way that a ghost had appeared in his bed last night and told him he shouldn’t be doing what he’d been hired to do.

 

So of course, because Harry’s life had been going just great for the past year or so, the ghost boy appeared again the following night.

 

“I thought I’d made myself clear. You’re not to change anything about the island,” he said.

 

“You’re real?” Harry asked, somehow more stunned by his appearance the second time than he had been the first.

 

“Oh, of course I am. How else do you suppose your things moved all the way across the room? Did you think they grew tiny legs and walked over to the fireplace?”

 

Of course Harry did not think that. But it wasn’t really any less plausible than a ghost having moved them, was it.

 

“You do not sleepwalk either. But you do breathe awfully loudly.”

 

“I do not,” Harry protested, mostly because it seemed the thing to do.

 

“Yes, you do. And you’re also going to quit whatever it is you’re doing to the island,” ghost boy said and huffed an annoyed sigh. “Really, the other two were far easier to convince. All I had to do was push a few things around, I didn’t even have to talk to them! Why are you so stubborn?”

 

“I like what I do, I suppose,” Harry said. “And I like the island.”

 

“All the more reason not to change it!” ghost boy insisted.

 

“But it’s already changed since you-” Harry said and abruptly stopped himself. Ghosts were... aware that they were, indeed, dead, right? But was it insensitive to bring that up? Should Harry not have-?

 

“Well, of course it has,” ghost boy said, sounding far more agitated now. “I’ve been dead for over a century!”

 

That answered one question then. Vaguely.

 

“So much has changed already,” ghost boy continued. Harry watched in fascinated horror as his hair began to float around him like it was swaying in a gentle breeze.

 

“The flowers have gone and Josh always loved them so. Oh, he won’t recognise it if anything more changes, you can’t change anymore,” ghost boy demanded. Contrary to how the origin of his voice had been unplaceable before, it now seemed to come from everywhere around Harry, almost physically pushing up against him. There were drops of water falling from the tip of the boy’s nose, his chin and parts of his hair, dripping down onto Harry’s duvet. His skin seemed to develop goosebumps up and wrinkle into bizarre shapes.

 

“He’ll recognise you though,” Harry said hurriedly, even while he thought that even just the subtle shifts in what the boy looked like made him a lot harder to recognise. It seemed to work though. Almost immediately the water stopped running over his body and his hair fell back down around his ears.

 

“Of course, yes. You’re right. He will know me,” the boy said. There was a sweet smile and a faraway look on his face.

 

“And... and I’ll get the flowers back as well,” Harry added, hoping that would appease ghost boy a bit further.

 

“You will?” ghost boy asked, turning a curious look on Harry, who would rather not be looked at by him, if he was being honest.

 

“Yeah. Louis’ll be okay with it. He likes flowers too.”

 

“Louis,” the boy repeated and Harry felt a cold rush run down his spine. Oh, fuck. Louis. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned that he wasn’t alone but then again this boy was a ghost. He probably knew that. “Is he the man with you?”

 

Harry didn’t answer.

 

“He’s a Devore, is he not?” the boy asked, his hair wafting up again.

 

“His name’s Tomlinson!” Harry quickly said. That was true, after all.

 

“Tomlinson?” the boy repeated. Harry nodded and tried not to appear too eager or pleased that the boy’s hair fell down again. “I don’t know of a Tomlinson family in Cornwall.”

 

“I think they’re from Doncaster,” Harry said. The ghost seemed to consider this new information.

 

“Why is he with you?”

 

“He, um, hired me.”

 

“Why?” the boy asked, eyes squinting suspiciously.

 

“He wants to return the island and house to its former glory,” Harry said, hoping that flattery would maybe calm the boy a bit.

 

“A noble idea,” the boy said. “Fine then. I shall help.”

 

“What?” Harry asked, feeling his eyes go round as saucers. That had definitely not been his intention.

 

“I was here during the estate’s glory days, was I not? And you weren’t. You should be grateful for my help.”

 

“Thank you,” Harry said, swallowing against the heavy lump in his throat.

 

“You’re welcome,” the boy said, smiling now. “I’m George, by the way.”

 

“Harry,” Harry said and wondered if it was impolite that he wasn’t holding out a hand for George to shake. Or would it be worse if he did? If George was able to touch his things, would he be able to touch Harry? And if he could touch Harry did that mean he could harm him?

 

“Good day, Harry,” George said, “Or rather good night. I will see you tomorrow.”

 

Before Harry could reply, George had vanished again. This time it took significantly longer for Harry’s heartbeat and mind to come to rest and let him drift off to sleep again. His sheets smelled of sea water.

 

It felt like no time had passed at all when his alarm sounded and startled him out of his sleep.

 

Down on his desk he found a book published in 1899 about the flora of Cornwall and its islands. Last night had definitely not been a dream then. Harry clutched the edge of the desk and watched his knuckles turn white while he tried to breathe calmly to get his heartbeat to slow back down again.

 

Okay, Harry. No need to freak out. Ghost boy’s just waiting for... someone. He’s not dangerous. Probably.

 

“What have you got there?” Louis suddenly asked from very closely behind him. Harry jerked upright, a sharp pain in his shoulder coinciding with an ‘ow’ from Louis. When Harry whirled around, Louis was rubbing at his chin.

 

“No sneaking up on you, got it,” Louis said, brow slightly crinkled. “Wow that hurts a lot more than I thought it would.”

 

“If it helps, my shoulder didn’t like forcefully being introduced to your pointy chin either,” Harry said. The lines on Louis’ forehead smoothed out a bit and his lips twitched in a smile.

 

“That does help a bit.”

 

“Glad my pain amuses you.”

 

“You’re the one who caused it.”

 

“I’m not the one who snuck up on someone and decided it was a good idea to put my chin on their shoulder,” Harry pointed out. Louis shrugged with a grin.

 

“Semantics,” he said, blue eyes twinkling. There was a slightly red splotch on his chin, but it didn’t look like it would bruise. Harry rolled his eyes to stave off thoughts about how probably even a bruise wouldn’t make Louis’ face any less pretty to look at.

 

“Anyway. I, um, found this old book on botany. It describes what kind of plants would have been around the time the house was built. I thought it’d be cool to get those back?”

 

“Are they very different from your original plan?” Louis asked. “Only, the house is not that old. I doubt many of the plants would have vanished completely or anything.”

 

“Oh, no. It’s just that Devore Manor is mentioned in it a bit,” Harry said. There had been a bookmark placed at the chapter dedicated to the stately manors of the archipelago. Apparently Devore Manor had been the place to be. Or at least one of the places.

 

“Oh! That’s cool. Where did you find it?”

 

“Just... lying around,” Harry said, trying to make sure he didn’t have to say ‘a ghost left it on my desk for me’. “Mostly by luck, really.”

 

“Well, that’s very lucky,” Louis said, eyes glittering mischievously for a moment.

 

“Yep,” Harry said. Louis’ eyes narrowed to squint at Harry.

 

“You’re strange today,” he said.

 

“Am I?” Harry asked and did his best to shrug nonchalantly. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, that must be why.”

 

“Hm. Sleepwalking again?” Louis asked, seemingly concerned.

 

“Oh, no,” Harry said. “Just restless for no reason, I suppose.”

 

“If you were feeling unwell, you’d tell me, right?” Louis asked. “I don’t want you to be on the island alone if you think you’re falling ill.”

 

“I’m okay, really,” Harry insisted, buoyed by Louis’ concern. Possibly those were butterflies fluttering around in his stomach.

 

“You’re sure?” Louis asked.

 

“I’m sure,” Harry said. There wasn’t anything to worry about. Just a ghost who wanted to help him renovate the island so some mysterious boy would be able to find him.

 

“Alright,” Louis relented. “But call Liam the moment you’re unsure.”

 

“I promise, mum,” Harry said, teasing grin in place. Louis smiled a little sheepishly.

 

“Sorry. I’ve got six younger siblings. I... do that sometimes.”

 

“Six?” Harry asked, probably sounding exactly as surprised as he was. Louis laughed.

 

“Yeah. The youngest set is only ten and the oldest twenty-four.”

 

“Quite a variety.”

 

“Yep. Now show me your plants.”

 

Luckily Louis liked the slightly modified version of Harry’s plan as much as he had the original one, so Harry didn’t have to flounder through excuses of why he wanted it changed. There was probably no good way to say ‘because a ghost asked me to’ and Harry was absolutely dreadful at thinking of excuses. When Louis got picked up by Liam that same evening, he kept shooting Harry calculating looks, like he was expecting him to collapse into a fever at any moment. He must have shared those concerns with Liam on the boat ride, because later on Harry received texts from both Liam and Niall asking him how he was feeling and whether he needed anything (including a place to stay that wasn’t the island). Harry would be lying if the concern exhibited by people he wasn’t related to weren’t touching.

 

Breaking all ties with Christopher had left Harry abruptly friendless. Somehow over the course of their relationship and with Harry’s involvement in getting _Fantastically Green_ off the ground, he’d lost track of all his friends who weren’t Christopher-and-his friends. And after... everything, he didn’t really feel like speaking to any of those people again. Since none of them had really made an effort to talk to him either, he assumed the feeling was mutual.

 

Louis was a surprise, to say the least. Harry had not at all expected to feel the way he did around him. It wasn’t a crush yet or anything ridiculously more than that, but it was probably safe to say that he both enjoyed Louis’ company and found him attractive. Maybe, if Louis was amenable, that could develop into something more over time.

 

Feeling like a teenager in the midst of discovering hormones and the confusing nuances of relationships, Harry rolled over to press his face into the cool pillow.

 

“You like him,” George said suddenly, making Harry whirl around, heart beating a mile a minute.

 

“Do you have to be so quiet?” Harry asked, trying to gather his wits.

 

“I’m a ghost,” George deadpanned. Harry wasn’t sure if that was meant to remind him that ghosts couldn’t make noise or that it was simply ghost etiquette to be as scary as possible, even if said scares had less to do with horror and more with timing.

 

“Right.”

 

“Your Louis,” George pressed. “You like him?”

 

“Of course I like him. He’s a nice bloke,” Harry said.

 

“I meant... you think him handsome?”

 

“He’s a good-looking man. I have eyes,” Harry said, not liking where this was going. The thought of George knowing about his burgeoning maybe-feelings for Louis did not sit well with him. Then George’s eyes went wide with wonder.

 

“You’re like me,” he said.

 

“Er... how so?” Harry asked. So far, there weren’t any similarities between the two of them that Harry could make out.

 

“You’re... interested. In men. Sexually.”

 

He whispered the last part like they weren’t the only two people on an entire island and suddenly what the reality of having lived through the second to last turn of the century must have meant caught up with Harry. There wouldn’t have been many openly gay people around. It would have still been illegal. Didn’t Oscar Wilde get sentenced for it just before the twentieth century?

 

“Oh,” Harry said, feeling at a loss. “Yeah. I am.”

 

George’s eyes went wide at the ease of Harry’s confirmation before he vanished into thin air again. That, Harry decided, was a bit strange. Even for a ghost.

 

For two days Harry saw neither hide nor hair of George, but on the third he suddenly showed up at Harry’s elbow, while he was making chicken cutlets for dinner.

 

“Josh likes chicken,” he said and then simply watched Harry go about his routine.

 

 

Over the course of the next three weeks Harry learned a lot of things but chiefly among them were the following three: getting geo-shaping equipment onto a small private island is a bloody hassle, desalination is a far more complicated and costly procedure than he had been led to believe by the guy who’d sold him the unit, and Josh liked too many things in his lifetime.

 

George couldn’t leave the house, so during the day, while Harry was running around the island, supervising the shifting of hills and the digging of the artificial river bed, he didn’t see any of him. But as soon as he stepped back inside after the boat had taken off that took the crew back to the main island, where they stayed for the duration of the project, George was on him. Josh liked the scent of roses. Josh liked marzipan. Josh liked kissing George when he wasn’t paying attention.

 

That last one had George flushing a very strange tone of blueish red, before he vanished for another three days. It wasn’t that Harry didn’t feel a certain modicum of sympathy for George, who seemed to have died far too young and never gotten to talk about who Harry hoped was his boyfriend in his lifetime, it was just that the constant barrage of information got quite overwhelming. Nevertheless, when George showed up again, still or again blushing, Harry found he’d sort of missed the company. Now that Louis couldn’t come up to the island more than once a month, Harry wasn’t picky about company.

 

And sometimes George wouldn’t talk about Josh. Or rather, not only Josh. He’d share tidbits of his own life with Harry, like his brood of siblings and how much he’d loved them. That he’d worked in the gardens at Devore Manor with his older brother from age twelve on and that was how he had met Josh. That his best friend used to work in the kitchens. That Josh’s father was a hateful tyrant of a person.

 

Sometimes his stories would make him angry and his hair would start to float and his skin would start to drip and the more it happened the deeper Harry’s suspicions became.

 

 

 

Then suddenly it was late April, the hills had been pushed to where Harry wanted them, the grass and wildflowers mixture  had been sowed and started growing and the desalination unit was almost installed. Harry was beginning to think the artificial river thing had been a bad idea, but if he could only get it up and running, it was going to sustain itself and at this point it was almost a matter of pride to Harry that he succeeded.

 

 

On the first weekend in May Louis came to inspect the progress and sat outside in the as of yet dry riverbed with Harry. They were sharing a picnic blanket and Louis was sitting possibly a little closer to Harry than was strictly necessary. Harry could feel the warmth coming from his body and let it douse him. Louis was the one who had sat down so close, after all. Harry wasn’t about to push him away.

 

“I want to apologise to you, Harry,” Louis said into the silence.

 

“Apologise?” Harry asked, feeling a bit disoriented as he tried to remember anything in their acquaintance that could have made Louis feel like he owed him an apology.

 

“Yes. After your first visit here, I ... googled you,” Louis said. Harry furrowed his brow. He couldn’t quite follow.

 

“I would have expected you to do it sooner,” he said. Louis looked over at him, Harry’s confusion mirrored on his face.

 

“Well, you were about to give me access to your private island,” Harry said. “I’d have googled you if the situation were reversed.”

 

“Maybe, but... I read an article about you and your ... relationship.”

 

“Ah,” Harry said. “The one in LAQ? That one was nice, at least.”

 

“I just... I feel like we’ve come to be friends, yeah? I should have given you the chance to tell me yourself, when you felt comfortable,” Louis said. “It wasn’t... relevant. I was just curious. I’m really sorry.”

 

“It’s okay,” Harry said. “Our falling out was nasty, there were bound to be articles about it and people were bound to read them. But if it makes you feel any better, I’d be comfortable enough now to tell you.”

 

Louis’ smile at that was small and private, making Harry briefly forget that they were sitting in a dry river bed discussing scumbag Christopher. Sort of.

 

“If it’s alright, I’d like to tell you something about me?” Louis asked then. Harry straightened up a little and nodded.

 

“Yeah, sure. Of course.”

 

“When I was twenty-five I was engaged as well. To a girl. I’d met her as my personal assistant, of all the clichés,” Louis said. Harry remained silent, but listened attentively. Given by the fact that Louis was now single, not married, he was guessing this story didn’t have a happy ending either.

 

“I was still a bit green behind the ears and somehow thought it was okay that we started flirting almost immediately. It took me a few months, but I finally askd her out and she accepted and I couldn’t have been happier. She continued working for me even though we were seeing each other and it was a little weird, but not very. She didn’t do any of the actual decision making that impacted the firm, basically only brought me coffee and sorted out my appointments for me.

 

“We weren’t perfect, of course, but we made it work and I was very, very in love with her.

 

“Fast forward two years and she started asking for money. I didn’t mind because I always thought it was ridiculous to pretend that I didn’t make boatloads more money than she did. She needed it, I had it and loved her, it was an easy decision. But then sometimes she’d ask for things, just luxury items, and I’d refuse to buy them, because they seemed decadent and over the top, yeah?”

 

Harry hummed and nodded his assent, not wanting to interrupt Louis.

 

“And she’d always throw these huge tantrums when I refused until about a year later when she just started using my card whenever I didn’t buy her something myself. Every time I tried to confront her about it, she somehow made it all look like it was my fault. I was never there for her, I cared more for the company than her, she deserved to spoil herself sometimes and it wasn’t like I was really going to miss the money. All that kind of stuff.

 

Looking back on it, it was so fucked up, but at the time for some reason I thought proposing to her would be the way to go. About two months into our engagement it happened again and she threw her ring at me and told me she’d refuse to marry me if I refused to provide her with the life she deserved.

 

Needless to say, we broke off the engagement. She left the company.”

 

“Wow,” Harry said, after letting the information settle for a moment. “We are just not cut out for this marriage thing, are we.”

 

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “At least we’ve already gone through the worst case scenario.”

 

“I feel like saying something like that is just tempting fate,” Harry said with a grin. Louis grinned back. For a moment Harry basked in the sunny twinkle of his eyes and then let his own face slide into a more serious expression.

 

“Honestly though? I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s been a long time,” Louis said. “The worst thing is feeling so stupid for how much I loved her.”

 

Harry huffed a semi-amused breath.

 

“Yeah, I do know what you mean,” he said. Louis smiled warmly at him and bumped his shoulder into Harry's gently, making them both sway a bit before falling silent again. They watched the night fall around them and not even George’s extremely strange brand of teasing that included several disappearing acts on his side could extinguish the tiny flame of a feeling in Harry’s belly that something between Louis and him had shifted.

 

 

When Louis left the following evening, Harry was uncharacteristically nervous. They chatted about Louis’ sisters back in Doncaster while waiting for Liam down at the island’s mini marina and all the while Harry was debating whether or not it would be okay to take Louis’ hand. It was right there, dangling by his side where he was stood slightly-too-close to Harry again. That probably meant he would be okay with handholding, didn’t it?

 

“Well,” Louis said, when Liam threw down the rope at Harry. They’d developed a sort of routine for when Liam picked Louis up, where Harry wound the rope around the stub of concrete on the dock a few times and held onto it, while Liam helped Louis jump aboard. This time though, Louis stayed rooted to the spot beside Harry.

 

“Yes?” Harry asked, heart speeding up in anticipation. Louis was licking his lips, had been the entire last half hour, and then laughed a little breathlessly like was nervous.

 

“See you soon,” was all he said though before he took a step. Harry felt the loss of his body warmth with a sudden intensity that surprised him. He stepped after Louis and reached out to grab his hand, holding onto it lightly. Louis’ hand was warm and soft and not even clammy at all. It really was a bit unfair, but on the other hand it fit perfectly into Harry’s and the action made Louis flush in the cheeks and look down at his shoes.

 

In for a penny, in for a pound.

 

“Text me when you’re home?” Harry asked, like this was a thing they weren’t already doing but also like this could be A Thing they could be Doing.

 

Louis looked up, eyes shining bright with emotion and then leaned in to press the softest kiss to Harry’s cheek, right where the dimple popped up when Harry smiled. Harry could feel Louis’ nose and cheek dig into his own, could smell the oh-so-subtle hint of cologne around him and feel the heat of his lips on his cheek.

 

“See you soon,” Louis said, instead of giving a direct answer. When Louis’ hand slipped from his own, Harry could still feel the heat of it like a phantom touch on his own. On the boat Liam was pumping his fist into the air. Harry could relate.

 

 

He didn’t lose the bounce in his step for an entire week.

 

 

At the end of May the stream was finally up and running, or at least trickling until the bed filled with water, and Liam was scheduled to bring the roses over any day now. The market garden Harry had ordered them from didn’t deliver to islands, so Harry had had them sent to Niall’s instead.

 

Over the last few weeks with the garden growing and more and more into itself - the wildflowers had come out beautifully and Harry had spent three days running around with hand-woven flower crowns in his hair - George had grown more and more restless. He had counted on the garden returning to how it used to look somehow magically delivering Josh to him and with every day that it didn’t he grew testier. He had his weird drippy rage moments almost every day and Harry began dreading the time of evening when he’d have to go back to the house.

 

Up until now Harry had forgotten that George had been very insistent on getting Harry off the island when they had first met and he was starting to wonder what would happen if he changed his mind and decided he didn’t really want Harry around after all. He had been able to move Harry’s stuff. It stood to reason that he could probably move Harry too, if he set his mind to it. Right over the first floor railing, maybe.

 

So when Liam called ahead that he would be delivering the roses that day, Harry decided to wait down at the mini marina. He wasn’t really scared of George as such, but he thought it wise to keep some sort of minimum distance between them.

 

“Ahoy!” Liam shouted at him from the boat when he steered it up next to the dock. “I bear your roses.”

 

“Finally!” Harry called back and caught the rope Liam threw him with practiced ease. With spring tourism picking up a bit, Liam had been busier recently and they hadn’t seen each other since that time he’d picked Louis up. When Louis had... kissed Harry. Sort of. Even now, two weeks later, Harry still felt the grin puff up his cheeks when he thought of it.

 

“I’ve also brought you a little surprise,” Liam said, helping Harry tie up the boat.

 

“Oh? Did Nialler come along?” Harry asked.

 

“Not quite,” Louis said, suddenly standing on the deck. The dark blue jeans and blue-and-white patterned sweatshirt he wore somehow made him fit right in against the boat and Harry felt his knees weaken a little. Nevertheless he left Liam to the rope and strode over, offering Louis a hand much the same way Liam had done for him the first time he’d set foot on the island. Louis somehow managed to look both adorable and like he was mocking Harry when he accepted the hand and hopped down onto the marina.

 

“Hi,” Harry murmured, voice dropping into an intimate, low register. Louis seemed to smile at him almost without thinking about it.

 

“Hi yourself,” he said. “I’ve got some free time, so I thought I’d help with the roses.”

 

“Great thought,” Harry said. He couldn’t help his eyes from flickering down to Louis’ lips now and again. Would it be alright to kiss him?

 

Harry saw Louis’ Adam’s apple bob when he swallowed and then licked his lips. Somehow they had swayed closer together and Harry could feel Louis’ warm breath brushing his lips.

 

“Later,” Louis said then, in a show of restraint that Harry would find more impressive if it didn’t stop him from kissing. “Roses first.”

 

“Are you done?” Liam asked when they stepped away from each other. Harry rolled his eyes.

 

“Yes, yes, Liam, you’ll be able to get back to your Sophia in no time,” Louis said, making Liam blush and Harry and Louis both laugh at him for it.

 

 

“This is really turning out so wonderfully, Harry,” Louis said later that evening, looking around the island. They’d already planted a few of the roses outside the front entrance of the house. It gave the house a far more lived-in feel. Harry could feel himself blush and waved Louis off.

 

“It’s kind of my job,” he said.

 

“You’re really good at it,” Louis insisted. “Take the compliment.”

 

“Yeah, alright. Lavish me with praise then, Tomlinson.”

 

“One little compliment and you think you’re all that, huh,” Louis said. Harry grinned over at him, a quip about how he’d always thought that because it was the truth, clearly dying on his lips when he caught sight of Louis. He was looking out over the island pensively, rubbing some sort of pendant that hung around his neck between his thumb and his forefinger. The mild breeze was pushing his soft brown hair around and there was a bit of stubble creeping in along the line of his jaw, like he hadn’t bothered shaving in a few days. Harry swallowed and looked away lest he follow the line of Louis’ neck and shoulders down to his hips and legs.

 

“What’s that then?” he asked, before he could form any other stupid thoughts about doing more than just looking at Louis.

 

“Hm? Oh, my mother recently found it and gave it to me. It belonged to my great-grandmother, Edith.”

 

“The one whose grandfather had this house built?”

 

“The very one,” Louis said with a small smile, ducking his head for a moment and then taking the chain the pendant - a medallion - was fixed too off of his neck. “I remember her wearing it.”

 

“Really?” Harry asked. He’d never even met any of his great-grandparents.

 

“Yeah. Mum and I lived with her for a bit when I was little,” Louis said and handed Harry the medallion.

 

Harry took it as invitation to open it and did just that. He was met with two photos, one of a baby and the other one... of George. He couldn’t have died long after this photo had been taken, because he looked exactly like it.

 

“Who are they?” Harry asked, both wanting and dreading the answer. He’d never dared ask George about the circumstances of his death, but he had his suspicions. To be honest, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out what had happened to George.

 

“The baby’s Edith. No one really knows who the boy is,” Louis said. “Edith’s dad had it on him when he... died, apparently. It was sent back with his body. He died in 1915, in the war. Gas.”

 

Harry swallowed heavily, unsure of how to react. There was a low buzzing of nerves in the pit of his stomach.

 

“Edith was only a year and a half old then so she doesn’t remember him. But it does sort of make you wonder about the boy, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Harry said, voice coming out a bit more croaky than he would have liked. “Do you know his name? Edith’s father’s, I mean.”

 

“Joshua, I think,” Louis said. “He should be up in the mausoleum if you’re curious. He died in the military hospital, so they sent his body back to be buried here. Perks of being the first son of Lord Justice of Appeal Devore, I suppose.”

 

“Is it terribly morbid that I’m curious?” Harry asked.

 

“Just a little. But sure, let’s go look at dead people,” Louis said.

 

“We’re not looking at dead people, just... graves,” Harry corrected, earning himself a laugh.

 

“Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

 

They followed the path Harry had laid up to the mausoleum only to be faced with a locked door. It made sense, in hindsight. Harry wasn’t quite sure why he had expected he’d be able to just walk in. He was about to turn back around when Louis produced a heavy-looking iron wrought key from his pocket and winked at Harry.

 

“You were planning on coming up here anyway!”

 

“You can’t prove anything,” Louis grinned, but unlocked the door. The inside of the mausoleum smelled dusty but not overwhelmingly of dead people, the way Harry had feared a bit. Harry stood for a moment just taking in the atmosphere of the room, while Louis started scanning the names on the headstones.

 

“Here,” he said only moments later. “Joshua Marie Devore. Born twenty-eighth of July eighteen-ninety-two, died November nineteen-fifteen.”

 

Harry stepped up to look at the headstone. If this Joshua had carried George’s photo into war then surely he was the Josh that George was waiting for. But if he was already here, then from where exactly was George waiting for him to return?

 

“He was only twenty-three,” Louis said. Harry made a vague noise of sympathy and assent. Harry’s life would have been over six years ago. He’d not even started _Fantastically Green_ yet, at that point.

 

“I can’t even imagine it,” Harry said.

 

“Yeah,” Louis agreed. “And he had a wife and kid as well.”

 

They stood in silence for a moment longer, before Louis turned on his heel and briskly walked out the door. Harry followed gladly.

 

Once Louis had locked up the mausoleum, he idled outside it and Harry found no reason to press him to move on, other than he suddenly had a really bad feeling about all of this.

 

“Can I tell you something?” Louis asked. Harry nodded even though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

 

“Ever since my mum sent me this medallion, I’ve been...” He trailed off. Louis raked a hand through his hair and then shook himself, widening his stance and squaring his shoulders like he was getting ready for an attack.

 

“I’ve been dreaming about Joshua.”

 

Harry couldn’t help the way his eyes went wide at that.

 

“I know it sounds absolutely nuts, but I do. I dream of him almost every night. That boy’s almost always there. His name’s George and Joshua’s absurd amounts of in love with him, but it’s, like, nineteen-ten so there’s nothing they can do.”

 

Harry swallowed heavily and suddenly didn’t want to return to the house after all. He didn’t want to see George. He couldn’t have George figure out that Louis belonged to the Devore family after all. Even if Harry didn’t know any of the specifics, it was quite clear from George’s lingering resentment that the family was somehow involved in his death.

 

“Say something, please,” Louis said.

 

“I’ve been talking to George’s ghost for about two months,” Harry said. This time it was Louis’ turn to go wide-eyed.

 

“I feel like I should say that’s crazy,” Louis said and then lifted up the medallion, “but...”

 

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “I know how that feels. I’m still not really used to a semi-angry ghost hanging around my bedroom.”

 

“Semi-angry?” Louis asked, brow furrowing.

 

“It’s complicated. I think,” Harry said. “He’s harmless usually, only when he thinks Josh won’t find him anymore he goes all wet and angry and it’s really quite scary, to be honest.”

 

“Is that why he drove the others away?”

 

“Yeah. He said nothing else was allowed to change so Josh would be able to recognise the place when he came for him.”

 

“So how did you...? Oh. That’s why you wanted to re-create the original gardens.”

 

“Yep. Seemed like the best idea, to just give in a bit.”

 

“Probably is,” Louis agreed. “What does he want?”

 

“Josh, as far as I know,” Harry said.

 

“But he’s...”

 

“Dead, yeah. So’s George though.”

 

“You make a valid point.”

 

They stood there for a moment, both lost in their own heads, until Louis reached for Harry’s hand, fitting his own along it.

 

“Do you think giving George the medallion would help?” Louis asked. “It seems to connect me to Joshua somehow.”

 

“Maybe,” Harry conceded. “But it can’t be you.”

 

“What? Why?” Louis asked.

 

“He hates your family. Or, well, not yours. The Devores. I think...” Harry said but broke off and bit his lip.

 

“Yeah?” Louis prompted.

 

“I think George’s death might not have been entirely accidental. Isn’t that how it works in the films? You’ve got unfinished business so you stay until you finish it?”

 

“You think he was killed?” Louis asked, hand tightening on Harry’s.

 

“Maybe. Either way he can’t leave the house, so, please, stay outside and let me talk to him. He’s been far angrier lately. I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Harry said, feeling himself flush a little. Attraction was one thing, indirectly telling Louis he had a crush on him or something a different one.

 

“Alright,” Louis agree, tugging at Harry’s hand. “Let’s get to it then.”

 

Harry clutched Louis’ hand in one of his own, the medallion in the other and let Louis lead him down the path back to Devore Manor. With every step his heart sank towards his stomach a little more.

 

“I have a really bad feeling about this,” Harry said, standing side by side with Louis about fifteen paces from the Manor’s entrance.

 

“Go on,” Louis said. “I’ll be right here. Not going inside and everything, yeah?”

 

Harry squeezed Louis’ hand once more for reassurance and then dropped it, walking up to and into the house.

 

“George?” he called. “I found something.”

 

George popped into existence right in front of Harry and snatched the medallion out of Harry’s hands. His expression went from interested to calm and then to angry so fast Harry instinctively took a few steps back until he stood on the bare ground just outside the door.

 

“Where did you get this?” George asked. His hair was floating again and his skin pruning up and dripping sea water onto the hardwood floor of the entrance hall.

 

“You drowned, didn’t you?” Harry asked instead of answering the question. George moved so fast Harry couldn’t even see it, just stumbled back from the threshold when George popped up right in front of him again, skin bloating and a bit of foam bubbling up at the corner of his mouth.

 

“This is Josh’s. Who gave it to you?” George asked.

 

“Their son fell in love with you and they killed you for it,” Harry said instead, still not giving an answer.

 

He realised his mistake only when it was too late.

 

By stepping outside the house he had given George a reason to come right up against the boundary of it. It put Louis in plain view. The moment George’s cold eyes settled on him over Harry’s shoulder, Harry felt his blood run cold.

 

George’s eyes flicked back and forth between them a few times, before he let out a primal scream, making Harry flinch back even further.

 

“You!” George roared. His hair was moving rapidly, as if caught in a tide and his voice sounded full and old as if he had the entire ocean inside him.

 

“I trusted you,” he accused. “You liar! He’s a Devore! He’s one of them!”

 

“He is, yes, but he’s not-” Harry tried to explain, but then several things happened at once. George let out another blood-curdling roar and threw himself towards the door. Harry barely had time to register what had happened before his body was saturated with something freezing cold and wet, like he’d been plunged into ice cold water, only he had no trouble breathing. He felt, quite literally, beside himself. A part of himself felt insubstantial, hovering beside his own body and filled with stone cold panic, while another part of him was filled with white hot fury, very much corporeal and spinning on its heel and lunging at Louis.

 

“George, don’t!” Harry shouted, trying to grab for his own body and unable to grab anything, sure that George would be able to hear him somehow, but the white hot fury didn’t dim. Louis had realised what had happened somehow and turned on his heel, but he was no match for Harry’s longer legs or George’s century old rage.

 

Louis yelped as George and Harry’s body wrestled him to the ground, eyes wide in panic.

 

“He’s not the one who hurt you, George, he’s not the one who sent Josh away,” Harry shouted, trying to grab at George in vain and feeling his own fingers pass through his body, while he felt his other own fingers press down over Louis’ mouth and nose.

 

“No, don’t!”

 

“They did it to me!” George roared, his voice scathing. It seemed to reverberate inside Harry’s head, inside both of them. If Harry had felt in possession of any bones, he’s sure he would have felt them rattle with the echoes of it.

 

“They took Josh from me and drowned me like a kitten!”

 

Harry felt faint from the onslaught of George’s memories that suddenly flooded his brain. There were George and Josh, laughing together as children, stealing moments to themselves as teenagers and thrilling at it, braving their first kiss hidden away from everyone and then Josh’s father, imposing and larger than life. A blonde, sweet-looking girl that Josh was to marry. A café in London and the almost obsessively desperate way they loved each other; pushed that much closer by people trying to pull them apart. And worst of all suddenly the darkness. The cold and wet and sheer desperation as two sets of hands pushed George’s body under water until he’d breathed his life out into the ocean.

 

Harry wasn’t sure how to pull himself out of this maelstrom and back into his own self, but his fingers were still covering Louis’ mouth and there was water beneath them, somehow.

 

“George, please,” he begged.

 

“Do you love him?” George asked, cruelty thick in his voice. Either way George would enjoy taking Louis from him; Harry could feel his almost exalted joy.

 

There was nothing left but honesty.

 

“I could!” he cried. “Please don’t take him from me like you were taken from Josh!”

 

Something in George stilled at those words and Harry lunged.

 

“He carried this medallion with him into war. It has your face on the inside, because even after you were gone he still loved you.”

 

George was still pressing Harry’s hands against Louis’ mouth and Louis’ struggling was getting weaker.

 

“Please. He’s waiting for you. You’re waiting here for him, but I bet he’s waiting on the other side for you.”

 

For a split second, George’s grip on Harry slackened and Harry wrenched his hand away from Louis’ face, watching him roll over and cough up water with both horror and delight that were both his and not.

 

“Please, George,” Harry breathed and felt George’s flicker of regret before he snapped back into his body. He felt wet all over, water dripping from his clothes and his hair and Louis was still retching and coughing. Harry knelt by his side and hesitated to reach for him, only remembering the feeling of his own hand cutting off Louis’ breath.

 

Louis seemed to have no such qualms and clamped a hand around Harry’s wrist while he gulped in shuddery breaths of air, interrupted by more coughing. Harry found himself murmuring calming nothings to Louis before he even realised he’d started doing it, holding onto Louis’ other arm with the hand that Louis wasn’t clinging to.

 

“Harry,” Louis wheezed out, legs shaking even though he was kneeling. The one arm that propped him up seemed not to be enough anymore and before he fell down onto the ground Harry wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him against his chest. Louis was shivering from head to toe, still coughing, but he clung to Harry’s sopping wet shirt and laid his head on his shoulder.

 

“I’m here, you’re okay, I’m here, you’re okay,” Harry whispered, repeating the phrase over and over until Louis’ shivering faded into a less panicked version. It was only when Louis was breathing more than coughing that Harry remembered that George would still have to be around somewhere.

 

Turning his head to the side he saw him sitting on the ground, utterly defeated, staring at the open medallion in his hand.

 

“I don’t know how to go to him,” he said, defeat heavy in his voice.

 

Harry remembered the searing love and deep connectedness he’d felt through George earlier, the culmination of a hundred and some odd years of loving someone only from a distance and couldn’t help but ache for him.

 

“He’ll come get you, won’t he?” Louis said and Harry knew at the same time as he said it that it was true.

 

George stared at them with an unreadable expression for a brief moment, but before Harry could backtrack in fear of that having set George off again, George's eyes lit up and he swivelled around.

 

“Josh?” Harry heard him asking. Harry couldn’t see anything or anyone behind George but George pulled himself up from the ground and stumbled two steps forward and vanished, leaving behind only his hat and the medallion.

 

The only sounds Harry could hear were the crashing of the waves in the distance, the rustling of the wind in the plants and Louis breathing. The tension coiled tightly in his chest snapped and before he really knew what was happening fat tears were rolling down his cheeks. He wrapped his arms around Louis and let his head fall down onto his shoulder, mimicking the position Louis was in and cried, letting the sobs wrack his body until he felt too exhausted to do it anymore.

 

“Hey, Harry?” Louis said, pulling back and resting his forehead against Harry’s. Harry wasn’t sure if his own was too hot or Louis’ too cold.

 

“Hm?”

 

“We should get out of these wet clothes.”

 

Harry huffed a laugh that felt at least half-hysterical but conceded Louis’ point. Pulling himself off the ground he offered Louis a hand and then pulled him up.

 

“I’d offer to draw you a bath, but...” he said.

 

“No water,” Louis confirmed.

 

Instead Harry took his duvet and pillow into Louis’ room, wrapped them both in as many fluffy towels as he could find and then pulled Louis close underneath the blankets.

 

“Remind me to tell Zayn about this,” Louis slurred, already half asleep.

 

“He’ll never believe you.”

 

“No, but he’ll make it into a badass comic.”

 

Harry hummed his acknowledgement and snuggled closer, feeling himself succumb to exhaustion as well.

 

“Wait, does that mean I get to be Poison Ivy?” he asked. Louis wiggled a hand free from his towel roll and grabbed Harry’s with it.

 

“You can be whatever you want to,” he slurred. Before Harry could form a reply, he fell asleep, Louis’ hand warm and dry in his.

 

 

(Zayn did turn it into a badass comic and while Harry did not get to be Poison Ivy, he was pretty happy with what he did get to be; Louis’.)

 

 

 

 


End file.
